TIME TO BE IN EARNEST
by
P D James


Time to Be in Earnest

ALSO BY P. D. JAMES

FICTION

Cover Her Face

A Mind to Murder

Unnatural Causes

Shroud for a Nightingale

An Unsuitable Job for a Woman

The Black Tower

Death of an Expert Witness

Innocent Blood

The Skull Beneath the Skin

A Taste for Death

Devices and Desires

The Children of Men

Original Sin

A Certain Justice

NONFICTION

The Maul and the Pear Tree:

A True Story of Murder (with T. A. Critchley)

TIME TO BE IN EARNEST

A Fragment of Autobiography

P. d. James

At seventy-seven it is time to be in earnest.

SAMUEL JOHNSON

alfred A. Knopf New York and Toronto 2000

THIS IS A BORZOI BOOK

PUBLISHED BY ALFRED A. KNOPF

AND ALFRED A. KNOPF CANADA

Copyright 1999 by P. D. James

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright
Conventions.  Published in the United States by

Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House, Inc."  New York,

and distributed by Random House, Inc."  New York.  Published in Canada
by Alfred A. Knopf Canada, a division of Random House of Canada
Limited, Toronto, and distributed by Random House of Canada Limited,
Toronto.

www.  random house.  com

Originally published in Great Britain by Faber and Faber Limited,
London, in 1999.

Includes index.

Isbn 0-375-41066x

First Canadian Edition

To the memory of my parents

Sidney Victor James

1895-1979

Dorothy May James

1893-1966

remembered with gratitude and love

Contents

Prologue ix

DIARY 1997

August--December

DIARY 1998 145

January--August

Appendix

Emma Considered as a Detective Story 243

Index 261

Photographic inserts follow pages 82 and 210.

Prologue

A diary, if intended for publication (and how many written by a
novelist are not?), is the most egotistical form of writing.  The
assumption is inevitably that what the writer thinks, does, sees, eats
and drinks on a daily basis is as interesting to others as it is to
himself or herself.

And what motive could possibly induce people to undertake the tedium of
this daily task--for surely at times it must be tedious--not just for
one year, which seems formidable enough, but sometimes for a lifetime?
As a lover of diaries, I am glad that so many have found time and
energy and still do.  How much of interest, excitement, information,
history and fascinating participation in another's life would be lost
without the diaries of John Evelyn, Samuel Pepys, Virginia Woolf,
Evelyn Waugh, Fanny Burney and Francis Kilvert.  Even the diary of a
fictional Victorian, Cecily Cardew in The Importance of Being Earnest,
"simply a very young girl's record of her own thoughts and impressions,
and consequently meant for publication," would have its appeal.

I have never up until now kept a diary, largely because of indolence.

During my career as a bureaucrat, a working day spent mainly in
drafting reports or speeches and writing letters or minutes left little
incentive for further writing, particularly the recording of trivia.

And any writing, if it is worth doing, requires care, and I have
preferred to spend that care on my fiction.  My motive now is to record
just one year that otherwise might be lost, not only to children and
grandchildren who might have an interest but, with the advance of age
and perhaps the onset of the dreaded Alzheimer's, lost also to me.  It
will inevitably catch on the threads of memory as burrs stick to a
coat, so that this will be a partial autobiography and a defence
against those who, with increasing frequency, in person or by letter,
announce that they have been commissioned to write my biography and
invite my cooperation.

Always after my refusal there is the response, "Of course, once

IX

X PROLOGUE

you have died there will be biographies.  Surely it's better to have
one now when you can participate."  Nothing is more disagreeable than
the idea of having one now and of participation.  Fortunately I am an
appallingly bad letter-writer and both my children are reticent, but at
least if they and others who enjoy my work are interested in what it
was like to be born two years after the end of the First World War and
to live for seventy-eight years in this tumultuous century, there will
be some record, however inadequate.

I have a friend who assiduously keeps a diary, recording merely the
facts of each day, and seems to find satisfaction in looking back over,
say, five years and proclaiming that "This was the day I went to
Southendon-Sea with my sister."  Perhaps the reading of those words
brings back a whole day in its entirety--sound, sense, atmosphere,
thought--as the smell of decaying seaweed can bring in a rush the
essence of long forgotten summers.  The diaries capturing adolescence,
I suspect, are mainly therapeutic, containing thoughts that cannot be
spoken aloud, particularly in the family, and a relief to overpowering
emotions, whether of joy or sorrow.  A diary, too, can be a defence
against loneliness.

It is significant that many adolescent diaries begin "Dear Diary."

The book, carefully hidden, is both friend and confidant, one from whom
neither criticism nor treachery need be feared.  The daily words
comfort, justify, absolve.  Politicians are great keepers of diaries,
apparently dictating them daily for eventual use in the inevitable
autobiography, laying down ammunition as they might lay down port.  But
politicians' diaries are invariably dull, Alan Clark's being a notable
exception.

Perhaps all these motives are subordinate to the need to capture time,
to have some small mastery over that which so masters us, to assure
ourselves that, as the past can be real, so the future may hold the
promise of reality.  I write, therefore I am.

Perhaps some compulsive diarists write to validate this experience.

Life for them is experienced with more intensity when recollected in
tranquillity than it is at the living moment.  After all, this happens
in fiction.

When I am writing a novel, the setting, the characters, the action are
clear in my mind before I start work--or so I believe.  But it is only
when these imaginings are written down, passing, it seems almost
physically, from my brain down the arm to my moving hand that they
begin to live and move and have their being and assume a different kind
of truth.

PROLOGUE XI

A diary, by definition, is a daily record.  I very much doubt whether
this proposed record of one year in my life will be a diary within the
proper meaning of that word; certainly I can't see myself recording the
events of every day.  I feel, too, that many social events can't
properly be mentioned since I have no intention of betraying
confidences and some of the most interesting things I learn are said to
me in confidence.  I love gossip in other people's diaries, while
recognizing that its interest is in inverse proportion to its truth,
but I suspect that this record will have little to offer in the way of
titillating revelations.  And to look back on one's life is to
experience the capriciousness of memory.  When I was very young and
leaving church with my mother, she told me that the hymn we had sung,
"Blessed Are the Pure in Heart," was sung at the funeral of a friend of
hers who had died in childbirth with her baby during the great flu
pandemic which followed the First World War.  Now I can never hear it
without thinking of that young mother and her child, both dead before I
was born.  No effort of will can banish a vague unfocused sadness from
my thoughts every time that hymn is sung.  And the past is not static.
It can be relived only in memory, and memory is a device for forgetting
as well as remembering.  It, too, is not immutable.  It rediscovers,
reinvents, reorganizes.  Like a passage of prose it can be revised and
repunctuated.  To that extent, every autobiography is a work of fiction
and every work of fiction an autobiography.

So tomorrow, on 3rd August, I shall write the first entry in a record
which I propose to keep for one year, from my seventy-seventh to my
seventy-eighth birthday.  Will I persist with this effort?  Only time
will tell.  And will I be here at the end of the year?  At
seventy-seven that is not an irrational question.  But then is it
irrational at any age?  In youth we go forward caparisoned in
immortality; it is only, I think, in age that we fully realize the
transitoriness of life.

There is much that I remember but which is painful to dwell upon.  I
see no need to write about these things.  They are over and must be
accepted, made sense of and forgiven, afforded no more than their
proper place in a long life in which I have always known that happiness
is a gift, not a right.  And there are other matters over which memory
has exercised its self-defensive censorship.  Like dangerous and
unpredictable beasts they lie curled in the pit of the subconscious.
This seems a merciful dispensation; I have no intention of lying on a
psychiatrist's couch in an attempt to hear their waking growls.  But
then I am a writer.  We XII PROLOGUE

fortunate ones seldom have need for such an expedient.  If, as one
psychiatrist wrote--was it Anthony Storr?--"creativity is the
successful resolution of internal conflict," then I, a purveyor of
popular genre fiction, and that great genius Jane Austen have the same
expedient for taming our sleeping tigers.

DIARY 1997

August

SUNDAY, 3RD AUGUST

I am writing this sitting in an almost empty first-class compartment of
the 3:32 train from Newton Abbot to Paddington, and staring out at the
red Devon countryside, now blurred and seeming to dissolve in rain;

even the eagerly awaited stretch of coast at Dawlish and Teignmouth
failed in its usual magic.

But it has been a happy weekend despite the continual rain today.  I
have been at Paignton to help celebrate the Golden Wedding of Dick and
Mary Francis.  Their son Felix arranged it, at the hotel where they
have stayed annually with their family for over forty years, and about
sixty relations and friends gathered to rejoice with Dick and Mary on
their wonderfully happy and productive partnership of half a century.

Fortunately the rain stopped yesterday for the main event, the evening
dinner-and-dance, and we were able to wander out from the dining room
to the terrace and drink our champagne looking out over Tor Bay.

The hotel is typical of the kind I relish, a mock castle designed by a
Victorian colonel in an excess of either alcoholic or imperial zeal,
but with comfortable rooms and a staff, most of whom have been at the
hotel for years, who give the impression of enjoying their work and
actually liking the guests.  The portrait in oils of the
founder-architect hangs on the stairs, painted, I suspect, by himself.
I was given a room with a balcony overlooking the sea and was able to
sleep with the windows open, listening to the surf and the call of the
gulls.

On Saturday morning, sitting in the lounge, Mary passed round her
photograph album with the wedding pictures, and how they brought back
memories of wartime weddings!  The cleverly contrived dresses-butter
muslin was a popular expedient--since coupons could not be spared, nor
was material available for a more traditional dress; the huge bouquets,
the small hats of the women guests with the eye-veils, the suits

we wore with their over-tailored shoulders, the groom and best man in
uniform.  It was interesting trying to identify the guests from their
photographs of fifty years earlier, the smooth, eager young faces
untouched by the depredations of war or the vicissitudes of peace. Only
Dick and Mary, smiling into the camera, seem hardly altered.

On Saturday afternoon I took advantage of a break in the weather and
walked alone into the little town, its main street jostling with
residents doing their weekly shopping, holiday-makers crowding the
shops selling the usual holiday and beach ephemera.  But I did find one
antique shop and bought a small Doulton jug and bowl as mementos of the
weekend.

As a writer I like small seaside towns best in autumn or winter.  There
is something nostalgic and slightly melancholy as well as depressing
about the slow death of the season that makes the seaside at the end of
summer a suitable setting for a crime novel; the windswept esplanade,
the last tight shrivelled buds on the rosebushes in carefully planted
municipal gardens, the amusement arcades locked and deserted, the
peeling paintwork and deserted shelters.  I used such a town in one
scene in Devices and Desires when the serial killer, the Whistler,
kills himself in a seedy hotel, the decline of the year symbolizing his
pathetic unlamented end.  For me, setting, character, narrative are
always interdependent.

I seldom have a birthday without thinking back to that date which none
of us can remember, at least not consciously; the moment of birth. Mine
took place at home, as most births did in those days, at 164 Walton
Street, Oxford.  I was a much wanted first child, arriving three years
after my parents married when my mother had had medical treatment to
make conception possible.  My father would have much preferred a boy
but was, I think, grateful to have a child, and to hope for a son in
the future.  It was a long and difficult labour and the doctor was
present-unusual in those days when the family wasn't rich.  I must at
some time have been told the time of my birth, but I have forgotten it
and, as those present are now dead, it is one of those facts which I
shall never know.  I can, however, recall my mother saying that a
friend had baked and iced a cake for my christening but that the doctor
and my father had between them eaten it all during the long night hours
of waiting.  This suggests that I was probably born in the early
morning.  I occasionally find myself

August 1997 5

wishing that I knew the actual hour, an irrelevance which can only be a
form of egotism.

Memory casts a capricious and undiscriminating light.  The high peaks
may stand brightly illuminated--love, marriage, childbirth, bereavement
--but the beam ranges with a fitful radiance over the dark and lost
plateaux between.  My first memory is of an incident when I was just
learning to walk.  Perhaps it is this which caused the beam to rest,
otherwise there is nothing remarkable about it.  I must have been under
eighteen months old and my mother had taken me to Winchester to stay
with her parents.  My grandfather, Edward Hone, was Headmaster of the
Choir School, later to become the Pilgrims' School, and the boys were
taught in a special classroom block in the garden.  Having broken free
of my mother, I toddled into the classroom to be met by a burst of
laughter from the boys.  I remember that my grandfather was sitting at
a high desk in front of them and came over at once to take me by the
hand and pass me over to my mother, who came fluttering through the
door full of apologies.  Mother always spoke of her childhood as a
happy time, but I'm not sure how far this expressed reality.  She was a
woman who believed in appropriate emotions and I don't think it would
have occurred to her to criticize either of her parents or the lives
that they led.

The only information I have about the Choir School comes from A History
of the Pilgrims' School written by John Crook, published in 1981, which
was sent to me a few years ago by one of my uncles.  I find it
interesting, not only because of the light it sheds on my mother's
early life, but because the school must have been typical of not very
distinguished boarding schools of its time.  My grandfather took over
the position of Schoolmaster of the Choristers in 1887.  His
predecessor was a William Southcott, who was required to resign
following a dispute about the voice trials during which he and the
organist came to blows.  Colebrook House was certainly a beautiful
place in which to be brought up.  It was, and is, a large
sixteenth-century building facing the east end of the Cathedral with a
mill stream flowing through its gardens.  My grandfather taught the
Choristers, virtually unaided except for one assistant, and on occasion
also sang solos in the Choir--he had a beautiful tenor voice.

My grandmother ran the boarding school.  Edward Hone received 15 for
each Chorister and 50 as a housemaster's allowance, to be reduced by 5
for every non-Chorister boarder he received over the number of ten.  It
seems to have been a complex and far from satisfactory arrangement
and

money was certainly in short supply.  However, things became a little
easier in 1905 when Colebrook House was made an all-boarding school and
my grandfather's allowance was considerably increased.

Even so, life at Colebrook House seems to have been tough.  The boys
were woken at 7 o'clock in the morning throughout the year and were
required to wash in cold water.  Breakfast at 8 o'clock consisted of
thick slices of bread and dripping, known as "toke," though
occasionally there was fish paste or marmalade.  The only morning on
which a cooked breakfast was provided was on the last day of term when
the boys would be given a boiled egg before their journey home.  My
grandfather was obviously anxious that the school should emulate more
famous preparatory schools and the boys wore Eton suits, mortarboards
and carefully blacked boots.  They would make their way in a crocodile
to the Cathedral, first of all for practice and then for Mattins, which
lasted for three quarters of an hour and was followed by morning school
until 1 o'clock.

Lunch was apparently more satisfying than breakfast.  It was taken in
the elegant dining-room at the back of the house.  My grandfather would
carve, my grandmother and their two daughters would hand round the
vegetables.  Perhaps because it was a meal shared with the family, Mr.
Crook describes it as "tolerable."  Lunch was followed by afternoon
school until 3:45, unless the weather was fine when games would be
played instead.  Evensong was at 4 o'clock and there was then a further
choir practice for the boys until teatime.  This, like breakfast, was a
miserable affair, consisting of tea and "toke" with black treacle,
which had spread all over the plate on which it was served before the
boys arrived.

(This was the practice my mother continued during our childhood.

Breakfast was always bread, butter, treacle and tea, and the treacle
would be spooned on to our plates the night before so that by the
morning it had completely covered the plate up to the rim.  In
childhood we only had an egg occasionally, sometimes on a Sunday
morning.)

Bedtime was early for the boys at Colebrook House.  My mother or her
sister, my Aunt Marjorie, would take a dish of "toke" and a jug of
cocoa to the schoolroom, after which insubstantial supper the boys
would go up to the dormitories.  As one might expect, Sunday was a
particularly busy day for the Choristers.  The first service would be
11 o'clock Mattins occasionally followed by a Choral Communion.  The
most important of the Sunday services, however, was Evensong at 3:30,
and this included a lengthy anthem.  It was to be many years before
Holy Communion became the main service at the Cathedral.

August 1997 7

The boys were inevitably educationally disadvantaged by the demands of
the Cathedral services, but my grandfather was a conscientious
schoolmaster and did his best.  I don't know whether I actually
remember what he looked like, or whether the image firmly fixed in my
mind comes from a single photograph.  In this he looks very like Edward
VII: heavily built, bearded, bespectacled.  He was a good teacher of
English and was genuinely musical, but he was a severe schoolmaster and
it was good for the boys that this severity was tempered by his
assistant, Percy Spillett.  I remember my mother speaking of him with
great affection.

He seems to have been one of those gentle and erratic schoolmasters,
typical of his period: a bachelor, tall, thin, moustached, scholarly,
soft-voiced and with a passion for palaeolithic artefacts.  Sunday
afternoon walks over St.  Catherine's Hill were a hunt for the
prehistoric treasures which never came to light.  Between them Edward
Hone and Percy Spillett seem to have given the boys as good a general
education as was possible under the circumstances.

Both my grandfathers were schoolmasters and both were fond of music. My
paternal grandfather, Walter James, was also a good linguist who for
some years worked for the British and Foreign Bible Society.  I know
little about him, but I do remember visiting him and his wife when I
was about ten and they lived in a small terraced house in South sea. He
had by then retired, but was an organist at the Garrison Church.

Some of the anthems he wrote for the choir were published, but none, as
far as I know, has survived.  I think he was largely self-educated;
certainly I can remember a framed diploma in the hall which I think was
awarded by London University after he had taken an external degree.  I
have always believed that he was Welsh, although I have never been told
so.

Certainly I see his, and indeed my father's, face very clearly when I
am in the Principality.  My father was born in Reading, but I have no
idea what my grandfather was doing there at the time.  Some of his
brothers and one sister were certainly born overseas, and I am told
that for some years Walter James acted as tutor to the children of the
Rajah of Sarawak.

My father never spoke of his childhood but I don't think it was easy.

Money seems to have always been short.  Certainly he left school at the
first possible time and entered the Patents Office, I think at the age
of sixteen.  He is an example of the waste of intelligence which was
tolerated during the first half of this century.  Just before the First
World War he must have had a job at Winchester, either in the Patents
Office, which seems unlikely, or in the local office of the Inland
Revenue.  It was in

Winchester that he met my mother.  This isn't surprising as he was
exceptionally fond of music and would naturally have attended the
Cathedral services.  They became engaged during the war and married, I
think in 1917 when he was a young officer in the Machine-gun Corps.
Mother was twenty-five, an age at which, in those days, a girl was
beginning to feel that she might miss her chance of marriage.

I think the days of the engagement must have been some of their
happiest.  A few years ago I found a photograph of my father sitting
with his troop, a slight, good-looking young man with his hair parted
down the middle as was then customary, the three stripes of a sergeant
on his sleeve.  On the back is written, "To my darling girl, a better
one next time."  There must at one time have been love, or what both of
them believed to be love; but they were ill-suited.  My mother was
sentimental, warm-hearted, vivacious, impulsive and not intelligent
and, although she had a rich contralto voice and loved the church music
which had been part of her childhood, she neither understood nor loved
music as deeply as did my father.  He was intelligent, reserved,
sarcastic, deeply distrustful of sentimentality, fastidious and with
little ability to show affection.  I don't think he had known much
demonstrative love in his childhood and what a child doesn't receive he
can seldom later give.  I think the first years were happy and became
more so when I arrived, the first longed-for child.  I was followed
eighteen months later by my sister Monica and, eighteen months after
her birth, the hoped-for son arrived.

He was christened Edward, after Edward Hone.

Children live in occupied territory.  The brave and the foolhardy
openly rebel against authority, whether harsh or benign.  But most
tread warily, outwardly accommodating themselves to alien mores and
edicts while living in secret their iconoclastic and subversive
lives.

I think that all three of us realized quite early in life that we were
the children of an unhappy marriage.  Of course it lasted; marriages,
however unhappy, did last in those days.  Divorce was still regarded
not only as a disgrace, but as a social failure, and for my mother,
deeply religious, it would have been a sin.  But there were more
material considerations.

It was just not possible for my father to support two households, and
my mother--untrained except for her nursing experience in the First
World War which was, of course, voluntary--had absolutely no means of
earning a living for herself and three children.  These were
inhibitions which applied to all except the rich and those powerful
enough to defy convention.

August 1997 9

For the whole of my schooldays, both in primary school and at the High
School in Cambridge, I never knew a child whose parents were either
separated or divorced.  No doubt this fact hid many wretchedly unhappy
marriages and some that for the wife were little more than
institutionalized slavery.  But for the stoically enduring there were
compensations.

Couples, knowing that they were yoked together for life, frequently
made the best of what they had.  Those who were able to survive the
more turbulent years of youth and middle age often found in each other
a reassuring and comforting companionship in old age.  They had a far
smaller expectation of happiness, admittedly, and a far lesser tendency
to regard happiness as a right.  All our brightly minted social
reforms, the sexual liberation since the war, the guilt-free divorce,
the ending of the stigma of illegitimacy, have had their shadow side.
Today we have a generation of children more disturbed, more unhappy,
more criminal, indeed more suicidal than in any previous era.  The
sexual liberation of adults has been bought at a high price and it is
not the adults who have paid it.

MONDAY, 4TH AUGUST

The beginning of a new year, whether the calendar year or the day after
a birthday, produces in me a desire to get rid of rubbish, rearrange my
books and drag into the light of day old boxes of long-forgotten
papers.

This morning I discovered a book of press cuttings which I started
keeping after the publication of my first novel, Cover Her Face,
published in the autumn of 1962.  It is a hardback analysis book which
I imagine I picked up as a bargain, finding the ruled blue and red
lines helpful to the careful placing of my cuttings.  I can't be the
only writer who, in the flush of triumph and excitement after
publication of her first novel, decided to keep reviews and articles.
For me the enthusiasm lasted only until publication of the second
novel.  But I was glad to find this first press-cuttings book although
it has survived more by chance than by careful hoarding.

Some of the reviews were laudatory, and most encouraging.  All assumed
that P. D. James was a man except Leo Harris in Books and Bookmen, who
wrote: "This is a very fine first, and I can't help feeling that the
author is a woman."  E. D. O'Brien in The Illustrated London

News wrote: "It is always pleasant, though not always possible, to
praise a first novel.  Cover Her Face, by P. D. James, justifies just
such an enthusiastic encomium."  It ended: "Insofar as this is a
mystery, I failed to solve it.  Mr.  James will, I hope, give us many
more such treats."  Francis lies in

The Guardian wrote: "Cover Her Face by P. D. James is one of those
extraordinary first novels which seem to step straight into the
sophisticated preserves of the experienced writer, yet retain the
newcomer's freshness of approach."  The reviewer in the Oldham Evening
Chronicle & Standard wrote that the book was "the kind of novel which
suggests that the author is planning a lengthy career in the
business--particularly with the introduction of a colourful character
in Chief Inspector Adam Dalgliesh."  But he or she much deplored the
cost of the book-18 shillings.  By present book-price standards a
hardback at less than a pound was not exceptionally dear, but it was
certainly not cheap for what the reviewer a little unkindly described
as "this kind of material."

An established writer, he suggested, could perhaps get away with this
overpricing, but not a newcomer.

There is even the cutting of an interview with photograph by a reporter
from the Surrey Comet who came to talk to my younger daughter, Jane. We
were then living at 127 Richmond Park Road, Kingston.  I was working as
a Principal Administrative Assistant at the North West Regional
Hospital Board.  Both Jane and her elder sister, Clare, were at home,
and my husband Connor was with us, rarely, between bouts of
hospitalization.  Obviously he hadn't been at home at the time of the
interview but, due to Jane's discretion, the article is blessedly free
of details about his illness or suggestions of the brave little woman
writing to support her family.  Jane said that her mother had always
been keen on writing, was highly delighted to have this first novel
published, and that most of her evenings and weekends were spent
working on her books.  It is an apt comment on what life at the time
was actually like.  The article ends: "In Inspector Dalgliesh, she has
a character who will benefit from greater attention and who no doubt
will be called upon to solve future P. D. James mysteries."  There is a
photograph in which I sit, arms folded, gazing at the camera, hair
obviously newly set, and with an air of slightly quizzical
self-satisfaction.

It is interesting how many reviewers assumed that I was a man.  One of
the questions I am often asked after signings is whether I deliberately
chose to write under the name P. D. James in order to conceal my sex.

Some questioners actually assume that I thought it an advantage to be

August 1997 ii mistaken for a man.  This certainly never entered my
mind and I am grateful to have been born a woman, perhaps more from an
innate positiveness rather than from any careful weighing-up of the
relative advantages and disadvantages.  But I would certainly never
dream of pretending to be other than a woman.  Not only would this be
pointless, since the truth becomes known fairly quickly, but women are
generally well regarded as crime writers and only a minority of readers
would reject a book because they disliked the sex of the author,
although I have to admit I have known cases.  My memory is that when
the manuscript was ready to be sent off to an agent or publisher, I
wrote down Phyllis James, Phyllis D. James, P. D. James, and decided
that the last and shortest was enigmatic and would look best on the
book spine.  It never occurred to me to write other than under my
maiden name.  I have never regretted my choice, particularly now, when
I may have to sign as many as three hundred books at an American
signing.  That is seldom a problem here; the British are much less
addicted to standing in long lines to meet an author.

I began writing Cover Her Face when I was in my mid-thirties.  It was a
late beginning for someone who knew from early childhood that she
wanted to be a novelist and, looking back, I can't help regretting what
I now see as some wasted years.  In the war there was always the
uncertainty of survival and one needed more determination and
dedication than I possessed to embark on an 80,000-word work when the
bombs were falling and lack of paper made it difficult for anyone new
to get published.  There is also in my nature that streak of indolence
which made it more agreeable to contemplate the first book than
actually to begin writing it.  It was easier, too, to see the war years
as a preparation for future endeavour rather than an appropriate time
to begin.  I can remember the moment, but not the date, when I finally
realized that there would never be a convenient time to write my first
book and that, unless I did make a start, I would eventually be saying
to my grandchildren that what I had wanted to be was a novelist.  Even
to think of speaking these words was a realization of potential
failure.

I can't now remember how long it took to write Cover Her Face, but I
suspect it was years rather than months.  When I began the book I was
working at Paddington Hospital Management Committee, and the book was
largely planned on the Central Line as I travelled from Redbridge to
Liverpool Street, then on by the Metropolitan Line to Paddington.  The
writing, always by hand, was done in the early
mornings when I would get up in time to spend about an hour writing before
I needed to leave for work, occasionally at weekends between visits to
Connor in hospital, and sometimes on the journey.  The work was
hindered by family emergencies, by pressure of my job and by the need
to spend some evenings at the City of London College in Moorgate,
studying for the qualification in hospital administration which I hoped
might eventually result in a job sufficiently well paid to support my
family.  I don't think it occurred to me then that writing novels would
be either lucrative enough or dependable enough to rely on.

It didn't occur to me either to begin with anything other than a
detective story.  They had formed my own recreational reading in
adolescence and I was influenced in particular by the women writers:
Dorothy L. Sayers, Margery Allingham, Ngaio Marsh and Josephine Tey.  I
had no wish to write a strongly autobiographical novel about the war or
Connor's illness.  I suppose, too, I have a streak of scepticism, even
of morbidity, which attracted me to the exploration of character and
motive under the trauma of a police investigation of a violent death. I
could always imagine myself writing a novel which wasn't a detective
story-indeed, I have written two, Innocent Blood and The Children of
Men-but I can't imagine myself writing a book which doesn't include
death.

Death has always fascinated me and even in childhood I was always aware
of the fragility of life.

And there were other reasons for my choice.  I love structure in a
novel and the detective story is probably the most structured of
popular fiction.  Some would say that it is the most artificial, but
then all fiction is artificial, a careful rearrangement by selection of
the writer's internal life in a form designed to make it accessible and
attractive to a reader.

The construction of a detective story might be formulaic; the writing
need not be.  And I was setting out, I remember, with high artistic
ambitions.

I didn't expect to make a fortune, but I did hope one day to be
regarded as a good and serious novelist.  It seemed to me, as it has to
others, that there can be no better apprenticeship for an aspiring
novelist than a classical detective story with its technical problems
of balancing a credible mystery with believable characters and a
setting which both complements and integrates the action.  And I may
have needed to write detective fiction for the same reasons as
aficionados enjoy the genre: the catharsis of carefully controlled
terror, the bringing of order out of disorder, the reassurance that we
live in a comprehensible and moral uni

August 1997 13

verse and that, although we may not achieve justice, we can at least
achieve an explanation and a solution.

Glancing now through Cover Her Face, I am struck by how conventional it
is.  This is very much a detective story in the mode of Agatha Christie
even if it aspires to probe more deeply into the minds and motives of
its characters.  Here is the English village, the stock characters of
priest and doctor, the anxious virgin who runs the home for unmarried
mothers.  The book is very much of its time.  Today the victim, Sally
Jupp, would not have found it necessary either to seek refuge in Miss
Liddell's home, or to take a job as a house parlour-maid with the Maxie
family.  The local authority would have provided her and her child with
a flat and the local social workers would have helped her to furnish
it, and welfare payments, although not generous, would have enabled her
to survive.  But I'm surprised how many readers say that they like
Cover Her Face.  It seems that the cosy, domestic, English village
murder has never quite lost its appeal.

After the book was finally finished and typed I had a stroke of luck. I
was selected for a three-month residential course at the King's Fund
College for Hospital Administrators, then situated in the Bayswater
Road.

The head of the college was an ex-headmaster of Brighton School.

He was a good administrator and I suspect had been a good teacher, but
not immune to that particular brand of social snobbery which I have
encountered more than once in the headmasters of minor public schools.
But he liked me and was helpful to me, and I was invited by his wife to
spend a weekend at their oast house in Kent.  A fellow guest was the
actor Miles Malleson, for me always associated with his incomparable
portrayal of Dr.  Chasuble in the film of The Importance of Being
Earnest.  He had written books about the theatre and I confided to him
that I had just finished my first novel.  He suggested that I send it
to his agent, Elaine Greene at MCA, and gave me an introduction.  My
memory is that I took the manuscript in person.  I can recall an
imposing building in Piccadilly, the large letters on the brass
nameplate, and meeting this dark-haired, rather intimidating American
woman who accepted the manuscript but was not, as I remember, either
particularly effusive or encouraging.

Elaine was at that time married to Hugh Carleton Greene, Director
General of the BBC, and after reading my manuscript she had gone with
him to have lunch or dinner--I forget which--at All Souls College,

Oxford.  There she had sat next to Charles Monteith, a Director of
Faber and Faber.  Elaine, an enthusiast for detective fiction, had said
how sad she was at the death of the crime writer Cyril Hare, whose
novels, mostly set in the world of law, are some of the most elegantly
written in the genre.  One, Tragedy At Law, is in my view among the
most enjoyable classical detective stories.  Charles Monteith said that
Faber would now start looking for a replacement for Cyril Hare, and
Elaine told him that she thought she had found one.  She sent the
manuscript to him next day and Charles accepted it.  I think this
success produced some unease among my daughters, who had read that any
writer of real talent could paper his or her walls with rejection
slips.  They tactfully pointed this out, anxious to arm me against
future disappointment.  I retorted with some tartness that children
with no faith in Mummy's talent would not get new bicycles out of the
proceeds.  A couple of extremely good bicycles as well as other small
treats constituted for me financial success.

I have remained with Faber and Faber ever since, and remained also with
Elaine until her death.  After that her younger partner, Carol Heaton,
took over and I am more than happy to be in her hands.

I can remember the moment of that telephone call with great clarity.

I was late home from work and returned as usual to an empty house.  My
husband was in Goodmayes Hospital, the children both away and my
parents-in-law had retired to Suffolk.  The telephone rang almost as
soon as I unlocked the door.  Elaine had been trying to get me earlier
and had made one last attempt.  Receiving the news that I was at last
to be a published author was one of the most exciting moments of my
life, far more exciting, in retrospect, than receiving the first six
free copies of the novel.

It would have been good to have someone with whom to share the news,
but I don't recall that this mattered at the time.  It was sufficient
to know that I was going to be a novelist.  I knew that evening, as I
pranced up and down the hall, that people do literally jump for joy.

There was one disappointment.  The book was due to be published in
1961, the following year, but I received a letter to say that Faber's
fiction list was too large and that my novel was being deferred for
twelve months.  At the time the wait seemed insupportable, but at least
it gave me an added incentive to make a beginning on my second novel
with quiet confidence that it would stand a chance of acceptance.

August 199J 15

TUESDAY, TH AUGUST

This morning I caught the 11:30 train from Liverpool Street to come to
Southwold where this evening I was engaged to speak to the Southwold
Archaeological and Natural History Society.  The venue was a room on
the pier.  I was met at Darsham station by Steve, who normally drives
me when I come to Southwold.  I have been familiar with the East Coast
since childhood.  After the First World War my father purchased one of
the large army bell tents and this would be erected on the cliff at
Pakefield, just south of Lowestoft.  Here under brown flapping canvas
we would spend two weeks each summer, the five of us sleeping with our
feet towards the pole like the spokes of a wheel.  It was fun for us
children but hardly a holiday for our mother.  But then I can't
remember her having a proper holiday during all her married life.

Suffolk is not the loveliest of English counties, its beauties less
accessible, less dramatically beautiful than more famous parts of
England, but I early grew to love the great skies, the sense of space,
the bird-loud estuaries and the churches.

I have used East Anglia as a setting for a number of my novels, the
last example being Devices and Desires.  The book had its genesis when
I was exploring Suffolk with an elderly long-standing friend, Joyce
Flack, who drove me in her ancient Mini.  I stood for a few minutes
alone on a deserted stretch of shingle and looked over the cold and
dangerous North Sea.  I remember that there were two wooden fishing
boats scrunched into the shingle and some brown nets strung between
poles, drying in the wind.  Closing my eyes, I could hear nothing but
the tinny rattle of the shingle drawn back by the waves and the low
hissing of the wind, and I thought that I could have been standing on
the selfsame spot a thousand years ago, hearing the same sounds,
looking out over the same sea.  And then I opened my eyes and, looking
south, saw the silent and stark outline of Sizewell nuclear power
station dominating the coastline.  I thought of all the lives that have
been lived on this shore, of the windmills, once providers of power,
now prosperous homes, of the ruined abbeys at Leiston and South Cove
which seemed like monuments to a decaying faith, of the detritus of my
generation, the great lumps of concrete half embedded in the shingle,
and the concrete pillboxes, part

of the de fences against the expected German invasion on this coast.
And immediately I knew with an almost physical surge of excitement that
I had a novel.  The next book would be set on a lonely stretch of East
Anglian coast under the shadow of a nuclear power station.  The book,
at present no more than a nebulous idea born of a moment in time and a
specific place, might take more than a year to research and plan and
the writing even longer, but already it has life.

The Southwold house which I bought in July 1995 enclosed me as I
entered it with a sense of welcoming peace.  Brian Duncan, the builder,
has removed the cumbersome and difficult-to-operate gas fire in the
sitting-room and opened the fireplace.  It now looks much as it must
have done when the house was built in the seventeenth century.  He
managed to find old bricks to line it and an oak beam for the lintel,
which matches the beams in the ceiling.

The lecture this evening was appropriately on the use of place in
fiction, a title which seemed to me to relate only remotely to the
concerns of the Society although this, they had told me, was not a
problem.  The atmosphere of indulgent holiday expectancy was helped by
the constant sound of the sea splurging against the pier.  I
illustrated the talk with examples of the way setting is used in
fiction: to create mood and atmosphere;

as an aid to characterization; to root the action in the firm soil of a
recognized place, thus aiding credibility, and to provide that contrast
which, in crime fiction, can enhance horror as well as providing a
relief from it.  Setting can also have a symbolic importance, as does
the black tower in my novel of that name and the nuclear power station
in Devices and Desires.

The talk was followed by twenty minutes of questions and discussion.

One question which I can be sure of getting, and did so this evening,
is: Why are women writers pre-eminent in the field of crime fiction?

I reply that if we are surveying the whole field of crime writing, then
it's hardly accurate to say that we are.  Even if we consider only the
detective story, I think it is still arguable that the sexes may be
more equal than is sometimes alleged.  Even so, many people, asked to
name writers of detective fiction, would begin with Agatha Christie and
probably go on to Dorothy L. Sayers, Margery Allingham, Ngaio Marsh
and, today, Ruth Rendell and a score of other well-known women crime
writers here and in the United States.  Some of the greatest novelists
writing in English have been women: Jane Austen, the Bronte's, George
Eliot, Virginia Woolf.  As women's creativity seems to find a natural
outlet in

August 1997 17

fiction, it's not surprising that women should be attracted to
fiction's most popular form.

And women have, I think, natural advantages, particularly that eye for
detail, for the minutiae of everyday living, which is so important in
clue-making.  George Orwell has said that murder, the unique crime,
should arise only from strong emotions, and here too women can be
preeminent since they have a greater interest in those strong emotions
than they have in violence or weaponry.  I expect, too, that women find
the conventions and the form both satisfying and supportive.  Thus
psychologically buttressed, we can deal with violent events and
emotions with greater security than we could in any other form of
fiction.  The detective story is, after all, one way in which we can
cope with violent death, fictionalize it, give it a recognizable shape
and, at the end of the book, show that even the most intractable
mystery is capable of solution, not by supernatural means or by good
fortune, but by human intelligence, human perseverance, and human
courage.

I've been considering the question since my return home.  According to
Julian Symons in his book Bloody Murder, the first authentic note of
the detective story proper was struck as early as 1794 in the novel
Caleb Williams.  Not surprisingly this is by a man, William Godwin,
Shelley's father-in-law.  Certainly this novel has many of the elements
of classical detection: a central mystery, physical clues, an amateur
detective, a pursuit and disguise.  It even foreshadows the use of this
formulaic genre to say something about society which the author regards
as important.

As the intellectual leader of the English radical movement, Godwin
believed in an ideal anarchy in which there would be no crime, no
administration and no government.  Hazlitt said that, once begun, it
was a novel impossible to put down.  Personally I find it unreadable.

I suppose most readers would award the distinction of being the first
modern detective story to The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins, published in
1868, and again by a man.  In my view no other single novel more
clearly adumbrates the later development of the genre.  Wilkie Collins
created one of the earliest fictional police detectives, Sergeant CufF,
eccentric but professional, shrewdly knowledgeable about human nature,
and based on the real-life Scotland Yard detective Jonathan Whicher.
Collins is meticulously accurate in his treatment of medical and
forensic details, there is an emphasis on the importance of physical
clues, and all the clues--a paint-stained nightdress, a smeared door, a
metal chain--are made available to the reader, foreshadowing the
tradi

tion of the fair-play rule whereby the detective must never be in
possession of more information than is the reader.  The clever shifting
of suspicion from one character to another is done with great
adroitness, and this emphasis on physical evidence and the cunning
manipulation of the reader were both to become common.  But the novel
has other more important virtues as a detective story.  Wilkie Collins
is excellent at describing the physical appearance and the atmosphere
of the setting and makes good use of the contrast between the secure
and prosperous Verinder household and the eerie loneliness of the
shivering sands, between the exotic and accursed jewel which is stolen,
and the outwardly respectable privileged lives of upper-class
Victorians.

But The Moonstone is a single book; I suppose that the credit for
having, as it were, invented the detective story and laying down its
main conventions has to be shared between two writers, and again both
of them are male.  It can be argued that, in five tales alone, Edgar
Allan Poe anticipated virtually every type of succeeding detective
story.  The sensational thriller in The Murders in the Rue Morgue
(1841), the treatment of a real-life crime combined with meticulous
deduction in The Mystery of Marie Roget (1842), the tale of a secret
agent in The Purloined Letter (1844), a puzzle revolving round the
breaking of a code in The Gold Bug (1842) and a murder mystery solved
by the narrator in Thou Art the Man (1844).  Poe's detective, Chevalier
C. Auguste Dupin, is an early example of the cerebral detective, a man
who solves crimes not by acts of egregious bravery or spectacular
cunning, but by observation and reason.

But if the detective story was born in the United States, one could
argue that it came of age in Victorian England.  Conan Doyle is the
creator of the most famous detective in literature.  He bequeathed to
the genre a respect for reason, a reliance on ratiocination rather than
on physical force, an abhorrence of sentimentality and the power to
create an atmosphere of mystery and Gothic horror which is yet firmly
rooted in physical reality.  Above all, of course, and more than any
other writer, he established the tradition of the great detective, the
omniscient amateur whose personal, sometimes bizarre eccentricity is
contrasted with the rationality of his methods and who provides for the
reader the comforting reassurance that, despite our apparent
powerlessness, we yet inhabit an intelligible universe.

Then there are the more modern American writers, Raymond Chandler and
Dashiell Hammett, both fine novelists, who have had an in flu

August 1997 19

ence beyond the genre.  Chandler was born in America but brought up in
England and was much influenced by Hammett.  Most aficionados of
detective fiction would agree with Chandler that his books should be
read and judged not as escapist literature, but as works of art.  I
would only add that I don't see why escapist literature shouldn't also
be a work of art.  Chandler would undoubtedly have deplored many of the
detective stories written by women.  He wrote that the English might
not be the best writers in the world, but they were the best dull
writers, and he inveighed against what he saw as the artificiality of
the detective story, proclaiming his wish to give murder back to the
people who committed it.  This, of course, is to reiterate an old
criticism, but in his case, I think, with little force.  Chandler's
lone romantic hero striding down the mean streets, imperfect but still
superior to the viciousness and savagery which surrounds him, is in his
way as much a figure of fantasy as is Lord Peter Wimsey, Roderick
Alleyn or Albert Campion.  Women too, in the American hard-boiled
novel, seem often devoid of reality.  They are either patient little
helpmeets tapping away at the typewriter in the office, or seductive
villainesses, as irrelevant to the hero's integrity as they are to his
life.

Then there are the novelists of espionage, the best of those surely
being men: Graham Greene, Eric Ambler and John le Carre, with his
fascination with treachery and betrayal and his marvellously persuasive
evocation of the sad bureaucracy of spying.  No woman has written about
international espionage with quite the same authority.

But I don't think it is rewarding to argue over which sex is preeminent
in the genre.  And perhaps the balance is shifting.  Too many male
crime writers, obsessed with violence and with the search for what
they, a uniquely privileged generation, see as the gritty reality which
they have never personally experienced, are portraying a world as
nihilistic as it is bloody.  Perhaps it is to the women we must look
for psychological subtlety and the exploration of moral choice, which
for me are at the heart of even the most grittily realistic of crime
fiction.

Tom and Mary Norman arrive tomorrow--they say shortly after five--to
stay until Saturday.  Tom is one of my oldest friends and one of the
few who knew Connor.  They met during the war when both went to
Cambridge for some preliminary entrance examination before taking their
B.A. courses.  They were due to have a practical examination the next
day and Tom suggested that they should go down to the laboratories to
see if the incubators were working.  If they were, at a time when
energy had to be carefully conserved, it would be possible to draw up a
list of probable questions.  The incubators were working and Tom gave
Connor a list of subjects for last-minute revision.  Connor told
himself, "This man is a genius and I will stay close to him all my
life," which, with a few difficult years' intermission during the worst
of Connor's illness and when they were serving in different theatres of
war, he effectively did.

I can't remember my first meeting with Connor, but I know that it was
when I was working at the Festival Theatre in Cambridge.  I was
assistant box office manager, assistant stage manager, and indeed
assistant to anyone who needed a willing if inexperienced factotum.  I
had finally said goodbye to my first disastrous job in the tax office
at Ely and, in taking the job at the theatre, probably had some idea
that I would like to be a playwright and that this would be good
experience.  It was certainly experience of a kind.  Connor and Tom
came together to one of the performances and we met.  I had no
intention of asking my parents for permission to marry--parental
consent was then necessary if bride or groom were under twenty-one--but
we married on 8th August 1941, five days after I came of age.

I shan't write about my marriage in this incomplete diary except to say
that I have never found, or indeed looked for, anyone else with whom I
have wanted to spend the rest of my life.  I think of Connor with love
and with grief for all he has missed: the grandchildren in whom he
would have taken such joy, my success, which would have made the burden
of mental illness easier to bear--as money always does--the journeys,
the laughter, the small triumphs and the day-to-day living we haven't
shared.  Tom Norman is one of only two friends now living who
experienced with us those Cambridge days and, later, our move to
London, the small one-bedroom flat we rented in Manchester Square which
was later destroyed in the bombing, Connor's life as a medical student.
I don't see him often enough.  It is one of the penalties of fame and
its concomitant over-busyness, and a matter for shame as well as
regret, that our lives become ill-directed and we spend so little time
with the people we love and most wish to be with.

August 1997 2,1

SATURDAY, 9TH AUGUST

Tom and Mary dropped me at Darsham station this morning to catch the
train before themselves driving back to Winterborne Houghton in Dorset.
The visit was a happy one for the three of us.

Mary was anxious to see Somerleyton, so we drove there on Thursday.

It is an extravagantly splendid example of early Victorian country
house architecture, built round a Tudor-Jacobean shell but retaining
few of the original features of the old house.  The particulars of sale
prepared in 1861, when Sir Morton Peto was forced to sell the estate,
described the Hall as "a specimen of the architecture of the
Elizabethan period, transformed by the purist taste into a rich and
noble example of Anglo Italian a rich, harmonious style pervades the
whole building."  It is very much a family home, which I liked.

We had lunch there in a small agreeable cafe, with a view of the
gardens, and then went on to see the Church of St.  Mary the Virgin at
Blundeston, notable for its round thin tower constructed in about
988.

Two women from the village appeared while we were there.  They took
pleasure in telling us about the church.  I said how glad we were that
it wasn't shut, and one of them replied that the police had advised
that it should be and that one of their previous vicars had, indeed,
closed it for a time but the congregation had insisted that it remain
open.  She said: "Why should we let vandals close our church when
Hitler couldn't do it?"

I love visiting country churches although, not being a motorist, the
opportunity to do so is limited.  Usually now there is someone from the
village keeping watch and ready and willing to talk about the church
and its history.  The pride and the love shown are appealing.  The
custodians are seldom young and I wonder how long this close personal
interest will continue.

On Friday we drove south to Thorpeness, that extraordinary black and
white mock-Tudor holiday village created between the wars, a bastion of
middle-class respectability and conformity incongruously facing the
bleak wind-scoured beach and the un tameable North Sea.  For me it is
peopled with the ghosts of 19305 nursemaids and small children in their
floppy-brimmed hats.  A good place to set a detective story?  Cer22

tainly it provides an intriguing contrast between claustrophobic
security and the contaminating disruption of violent crime, but the
architecture is too uniform to stimulate the creative imagination. Then
from Thorpeness to Aldeburgh, where we ate a picnic lunch at one of the
wooden tables with benches outside the Moot Hall.  It was warm and
sunny, as it was for the whole of the visit.

One of the delights of being with Tom and Mary is their knowledge of
natural history.  There isn't a bird, butterfly, flower or tree which
they can't name.  They spend much time travelling, often in some
discomfort, in remote areas of Asia, searching for and photographing
rare orchids.

One, which Tom was the first to discover and describe, is named after
him.  At Covehithe we saw a butterfly that Tom said was called the
Holly Blue and which he recognized as female because of the darker hue
round its wings.  It lives for just three days, and I wondered whether
ours were the only human eyes that had actually seen it during that
brief span.  As Tom and Mary moved through the gate leading to the
abbey ruin, the butterfly fluttered to a leaf close to me and rested
motionless.  It was one of those rare moments in which a fugitive
beauty, briefly contemplated, untouchable, is experienced with a
peculiar intensity, the sense of being a privileged spectator of a life
which, however brief, is part of a mysterious whole.

MONDAY, 11TH AUGUST

I'm back again in London.  Last night was swelteringly hot and I awoke
this morning to find myself lying in a pool of sweat.  The house is
again being underpinned and the mess outside is appalling.  The two
young men on the job, who seem to work cheerfully in this awful heat,
have dug deep holes at the front, side and back.  Despite my offer of
unlimited tea, surely necessary in this heat, they won't come into the
house--I imagine because the firm have a policy that they never do--but
bring their own drinks with them.  The house today looks particularly
depressing and dilapidated.  The cracks seem to have widened during the
last few days as if the house has resigned itself to decrepitude.  I
shall have to wait several months after the underpinning is finished
before any repairs

August 1997 23

and redecoration can be carried out.  I long to see it restored to what
it once was.

I had lunch with Frances Fyfield at the Belvedere in Holland Park.  It
is always good to see Frances, whom I admire as a crime writer and
value as a friend.  Arriving early, I spent some time quietly walking
round what must be one of London's loveliest parks.  I have been
fortunate all my life to live only in beautiful and historic places,
first Oxford, then Ludlow, then Cambridge, and finally London.  I can't
remember when my parents moved from Oxford to Ludlow, but it was
certainly before I went to school.  I don't think young children
respond to natural beauty; people are more important than flowers and
trees; but to live in Ludlow from the age of four to eleven meant that
my eyes saw little of the world outside home which was without beauty,
and this constant exposure to the delights of one of England's
loveliest towns must surely have left its legacy.

Looking back on my early schooldays, they seem closer to the Victorian
age than they do to the life of a primary school child today, and
indeed they were closer, in time as well as in attitudes to teaching. I
was taken to my first school, which I must have attended from the age
of five, not by my mother, but by a boy little older than myself who
lived nearby.

My memory is of being lugged along at a furious pace by this reluctant
but not unkind attendant.  The schoolroom was large and square with a
huge coal fire burning in winter, the fire surrounded by a high
fireguard.

It was a room which came alive in memory when I read an account of the
schoolroom at Lowood in Jane Eyre, although I am sure the two
establishments had absolutely nothing else in common.  There were no
inside lavatories and I can distinctly recall the day in which I was
sitting on one of the wooden seats in the outside shed when part of the
plaster ceiling fell on my head.  I was temporarily stunned by
surprise-although certainly not hurt, since no one at home was ever
told of the misadventure--but I sat there, my head covered in plaster,
until one of the children, alerted by the noise, summoned a teacher.  I
can remember her gazing at me with an expression half-shocked,
half-amused.

We seldom went straight home after school.  My small minder had a
fertile and slightly morbid imagination (but who am I to complain?) and
would lug me down to the river in the hope of seeing drowned bodies of
which he seemed in daily expectation.  We were disappointed, but I do
remember being taken to see a man who had broken his arm.  He was
sitting in the back garden on a kitchen chair, nursing his arm and
moaning, and we children gazed at him through the chink in the wooden
fence in fascinated anticipation, although he was a very poor
substitute for a drowned corpse.

The two medical problems of the school were nits and ringworm, the
second the more serious.  Those afflicted would have their heads shaved
and subsequently wore small cotton caps, a badge of shame, in which
they looked like diminutive clowns.  One compensation, however, was
that girls with straight hair--regarded as an affliction in those
days-frequently grew it with curls after the shaving.

My second school, which I remember much more clearly, was the British
School, a red-brick building on Old Street, fronted by an asphalt
playground and iron railings.  The school was named British not from
patriotism or any necessity to distinguish it from alien
establishments, of which in Ludlow there were none, but because it was
one of the schools founded by the British Society, a voluntary and
charitable organization established in 1840 to provide elementary
education for the children of the poor.  The children of the early
nineteenth century would still have felt perfectly at home in it.  And
the name was not inappropriate.  A map, permanently displayed in the
largest double classroom, with its splurges of red--Canada, India,
Australia, New Zealand--its small islands like splashes of blood in all
the oceans of the world, enabled our teacher to point out that this
was, in truth as well as legend, an empire on which the sun never set.
Empire Day was a notable event celebrated with a march round the
playground and a salute to the flag.  The teaching was not jingoistic
but we were imbued with a belief that the empire was beneficent and the
rulers well-intentioned, a view which may have been simplistic but was
probably no more damaging than the present belief of some young people
I meet that everything that has gone wrong with the world in the past
century is the fault of Britain.

My generation's early years were dominated by the 1914-18 war, a
catastrophe which none of us were old enough to remember but which had
scarred the lives of our parents' generation and cast over our own a
shadow of uncomprehended vicarious sadness, a universal grieving which
reached its apogee on Armistice Day when, on the eleventh hour of the
eleventh day of the eleventh month, the country would virtually come to
a stop as we stood for the silence.

I learned to read very young, certainly well before I started school,
and I can remember the day when it happened.  My mother would buy

August 1997 25

a comic each week, Tiger Tim or The Rainbow, and would find time to
read it to me.  From the moment the comic was handed over, the waiting
to hear it read was intolerable.  And then, one morning, to my
astonished delight, the curved and angular shapes under the pictures
suddenly came together and made sense.  From now on I would need no
help.  I could read.  I must have been helped by the pictures and it
was probably a matter of relating words to image.  But it is one of my
earliest memories of great happiness.

The school had no library and I can remember few books except Piers
Plowman's History of England.  History lessons were my joy.  In memory
they are a jumble of marvelous tales: myths, legends and facts,
continents, centuries and characters blissfully muddled together so
that I came to see them as a series of vivid pictures.  Alfred brooding
by the fire as the cakes blackened, a white pall of snow falling on the
coffin of Charles I, Hannibal urging his elephants across the Alps,
Julius Caesar falling in a welter of blood, Wolfe storming the heights
of Quebec.  There must have been some attempt at chronology since I
clearly recall the Blue River of History which stretched along one wall
on which we would stick cut-out figures of kings and queens, insert
dates and draw pictures of the main events.

I was happy at the British School.  The Headmaster, Mr.  Wynn (I think
that is how the name was spelt), seems in retrospect to have been a
remarkable teacher.  He loved poetry and his choice was eclectic.  We
learned the poems by heart and I can still remember the poems of the
Shropshire countryside, particularly A. E. Housman.  We enjoyed the
vigour and patriotic fervour of poems which today would, I fear, be
regarded as politically incorrect: "Horatio Keeping the Bridge,"

"Vitae Lampada,"

"Drake's Drum."  The first poem I was asked to read aloud to the
class--I must have been about eight at the time--was "The Burial of Sir
John Moore at Corunna."  I was torn between pride and embarrassment
caused by my awareness when scanning the verses that the word "bayonet"
was new to me and I could neither understand nor pronounce it.

All the poems have remained favourites and I am sorry that children, no
longer required to learn poetry by heart, are denied this storehouse of
pleasure.  The day began always with an act of worship and a hymn,
although I have no memory of hymn books.  I think the hymns were those
we frequently sang in church so that the same ones recurred with
somewhat monotonous frequency, sung in the sing-song childish voices

of the Welsh border.  Every morning throughout my school life I heard a
reading from the King James Bible.  There was, thank God, no Good News
Bible, a version which is very bad news for anyone who cares for either
religion or literature.

My parents, ever restless, moved house four times during the few years
we lived in Ludlow.  The third house, well outside the town, was too
large and expensive for my father's income and we didn't stay very
long.  It was called The Woodlands and stood alone in a beautiful
garden which ran down to the River Teme.  My sister and I walked to
school each day carrying our lunch between us in a wicker basket.  It
was a long walk and I can remember one winter day when we both trudged,
weeping rather desolately with the cold.

I saw great poverty when I was a young child; poverty is not
ameliorated by the beauty of its surroundings.  There seems to be a
belief that urban poverty is worse than rural poverty; I believe the
reverse may be true.  In cities there are more public places, more
libraries, more refuges from the cold, A few of the children I went to
school with were almost in rags.  I can remember clearly one small
boy--his name was George-with the pinched face of an adult, a
similarity enhanced by a blob of white foam near his ear which reminded
me of my father's shaving soap.

Little else but the child's face was washed, and he came to school
ill-shod and, I suspect, hungry.  At one lesson he was very severely
caned (the use of the cane, brought sharply across the palm of the
hand, was fairly common) and howled with pain and perhaps a less
focused misery.  For the remainder of the lesson the male teacher was
particularly kind to him, colluding with him in small jokes against the
rest of us.  Even as an eight year-old I knew that this was because he
was ashamed of his severity.

From an early age I had this insight into adult motives and sometimes
spoke uncomfortable truths aloud, a habit which caused my mother to
describe me as a cynical child.  I can't have been an easy one,
perhaps, nor a pleasant one.  I sometimes regret that my insight into
my own motives has been less acute.

Despite deprivation we never saw a policeman at the school; there was
no violence, nothing was ever stolen.  What, indeed, was there to
steal?  It is difficult for people of my generation totally to accept
the theory fashionable in the 19605 and still popular with some
optimists that the main cause of criminality is deprivation.
Deprivation is, of course, relative.  The poor then had so much less,
expected so much less, were satisfied with less.  The inequalities and
injustices of society were too

August 1997 27

readily accepted by the victims as well as by the more prosperous, but
they were not constantly emphasized by television advertisements with
their cunningly contrived celebrations of material success, nor were we
children taught directly or by implication that because we had less,
less was expected of us.  But I remember George at the British School
if I am ever tempted to believe that all was well with England in those
years between the wars.

A Victorian child of the same class--the Footers' daughter
perhaps-received into our family would have felt immediately at home; a
modern child, transported to a house without electricity, central
heating, television, telephone or the use of a car, would feel himself
banished to a dark age.

The sitting-room of our first Ludlow house, in a small terrace near the
river, was lit by an oil lamp which dominated the square central table.
As the shadows lengthened I would watch my mother turn up the wick,
draw the match along its narrow oil-soaked edge and gently lower the
glass funnel.  It was like an evening benison to see my siblings'
expectant faces glowing gently and warmly in the light.  Our final
house in Linney View was lit by gas.  The wall-mounted lights were
fitted with short chains which, when pulled, would activate the gas
supply or turn it off.  The gas-mantels were delicate thimble-shaped
domes of what looked like starched muslin, and so fragile that they
could be fractured even by the careless thrust of a taper.  Most of my
childhood errands were to buy new mantels for the gas lights.

And the Victorian child would have felt familiar with our weekly
rituals;

the coke boiler lit every Saturday to provide hot water for the weekly
bath, the clean clothes laid out for church on Sunday, the weekly
administration of a purgative without regard to evidence of need, a
prophylactic rather than a remedy; familiar, too, with the oddly named
liberty bodice and with the itchy, wash-hardened discomfort of winter
combinations.

We only very rarely saw a doctor.  Doctors in the 19205 had little more
in their armoury than had their Victorian predecessors, but what they
couldn't offer in scientific medicine was balanced by the patient's
almost superstitious belief in the doctor's authority over the disease.
To call in the doctor was an admission that the illness was serious,
family and folklore remedies had failed and the secular deity must be
summoned; his fee, found with difficulty, was both a propitiation and a
talisman.  A child admitted to hospital never saw his mother until he
was discharged, there

being a belief that the presence of parents only upset child patients
unnecessarily and disturbed hospital routine.  My brother was admitted
to hospital--I think because of a fistula--soon after we arrived in
Ludlow, and on his return home called Mother "nurse" for weeks.  There
was a belief that intractable illness or vague ill-health were due to a
focus of infection.  Many adults spat out all their perfectly sound
teeth into the receiving kidney-shaped bowl, while few middle-class
children reached adolescence with tonsils and adenoids intact.

Children need to play as they need air, and Ludlow was the ideal town
for an imaginative child.  If we had been given expensive toys or had
been brought up with television, video recorders and computer games,
I'm sure we would have spent as much time tapping away in front of a
screen as does the modern child, but without these excitements we had
to make our own amusements.  The street, almost entirely free of cars,
was open to us, as were the water meadows sloping to theTeme, the river
and Whitcliffe above, the paths hewn into the rock which surrounds the
castle and which, with an outcrop of shrubs and the occasional cave,
provided the setting for imaginative play and the acting out of
innumerable roles.  We had no bicycles and, although I longed for a
scooter, my father avoided this expense by his theory that a scooter
was a dangerous indulgence since it resulted in one leg being
permanently shorter than the other.  Similarly bedside lamps were not
provided on the grounds that reading in bed damaged the eyesight.

At school, boys and girls were separated in the asphalt playground and
the games we played there were less imaginative, more ritualistic and
hierarchical.  The two chief ones were skipping, usually accompanied by
chanting, and hopscotch.  A chalky stone would be used to mark out the
hopscotch rectangle of six squares and we played by kicking a flat
stone from square to square, sometimes diagonally, sometimes missing a
square, or with other variations to test skill.  It was important to
find the right stone and, once found, it was jealously guarded.  It
needed to be flat but with rounded edges, smooth enough to slide easily
but not so smooth that it skidded out of control.

On Saturdays in summer we would be taken, or more often sent alone, to
paddle in the Teme.  Minnows were caught and brought home in jam-jars
and their early, much-lamented deaths were followed by ceremonial
burying in matchboxes with full choral service.  I remember that
playing church was one of our enthusiasms.  As the eldest I was
invariably the parson, draped in one of my mother's old night dresses
and indeed

August 1997 29

seniority established my right to the best role in any of our
make-believe games.

We enjoyed a freedom unknown to most children today, freedom of the
streets, the walks round the castle, the river.  Some of the lessons we
learned in the streets would have horrified our parents but the two
worlds didn't communicate.  With few toys, we constructed a richly
imaginative world.  Our parents could turn us loose, apparently without
anxiety.  I can remember only one untoward incident.  We were playing
in the shallow cave off one of the castle walks when a young man
carrying a cane invited us to follow him to a more secluded place and
spank his bottom.  To children who spent some ingenuity in avoiding
having our bottoms spanked the request was bizarre.  When we declined
he walked away without pressing us.

Children must have been sexually abused when I was a child; they always
have been.  But because the fear of sexual abuse hadn't become a
national obsession we were never taught to be afraid of strangers.  The
criminal statistics for England and Wales show that seven to eight
children are murdered each year by strangers and this figure has not
greatly altered over the years.  The figures are insignificant compared
with the dangers to children on the roads, but they can never be
comparatively insignificant in the minds of parents.  The possible
abduction, rape or murder of a child is the horror which we hardly dare
allow into our thoughts.  Because of those seven to eight tragic deaths
children today, particularly middle-class children, live under a form
of house arrest.

And for our external fantasy life we had the cinema.  I am not sure
whether the price of admission to the Saturday afternoon matinee at
Ludlow was one penny or twopence, I rather think the former.  I can
remember joining the long queue of children, pressing our backs against
the staircase wall, waiting for the doors to the auditorium to open.  I
suppose there must have been some form of censorship of films, but the
ones which remain in memory certainly weren't made for children.
Perhaps I saw some of them with my parents.  I can remember the silent
films, particularly Birth of a Nation, remember, too, the first talkie,
Broadway Melody of 1929.  The arrival of the talkies aroused immense
interest and the manager of the cinema announced that, in contrast to
the inferior sound systems in the picture palaces of Shrewsbury or
London, Ludlow was to have "the talkies not the squawkies."  As we had
no baby-sitter the whole family went together to participate in this
modern miracle.  The auditorium darkened, the screen glowed, music
swelled out

in glorious bursts of melody and--almost unbelievably--the gods and
goddesses spoke.

On Sunday afternoons there was usually the family walk.  It can't have
been much pleasure for my parents since I remember that we trailed
after them, bored, tired and oblivious to everything but the need for
this compulsory exercise to end.  But paradoxically it left me with a
love of walking which has remained all my life, and childhood walks
through the Shropshire meadows return every time I smell clover or the
pungent scent of Queen Anne's lace or feel wet grass against my
ankles.

And then came the day of the scholarship examination, the equivalent of
the later Eleven Plus.  I can't recall that we were given any
particular coaching for this, but we did all realize its supreme
importance.  If I passed I would go to the high school, an almost
unimaginable privilege.

I would learn French and Latin, the school would have a library, there
would be all the less academic excitement of the stories in the
Schoolgirls Own which were my weekly reading.  Those of us who passed
the first written part of the examination then went to the high school
for the oral, and I can remember waiting to be called into the
interview room, sitting on a very low chair in the kindergarten
classroom.  I had no problem with the first part of the interview but
mental arithmetic, as always, was sheer horror as the metal grille of
incomprehension clanged down.

And then some four weeks later came the letter to say that I had been
successful and was to take the enclosed form with me to the medical
centre for my physical examination.  I can remember walking round the
castle to the familiar office where we used to go to have cuts bound
up, chests listened to and minor injuries treated by the school nurse.
I was dizzy with happiness, an iridescence of joy which embraced not
only me, but all the world around me.  The stones on the path gleamed
with a supernatural light, the grasses shivered and silvered, the Teme
ran sparkling under a clear sky, even the ramparts of the castle reared
over me like some celestial city.  Alas, the triumph and the joy were
both premature.

Apparently the money didn't run to the number of pupils offered places
and the last on the list fell off.  I was undone by that dreaded mental
arithmetic.

So I went instead to the National School, previously one of the
charitable institutions established by the National School Society
between 1808 and 1811, dedicated to the propagation of the doctrine of
the Church of England.  Here every week a local parish priest would
arrive to teach us the Collect for the week and to instruct us in the
faith.  So those

August 1997 31

memorable prayers, so short and yet so pregnant with meaning, entered
early into my consciousness at school as well as in church and became
part of my literary inheritance.

But I wasn't long at the National School.  My father, who worked in the
local Income Tax office, had applied again for a transfer and, at the
age of eleven, I moved with my family to Cambridge and began the last
and happiest stage of my formal education at the Cambridge County High
School for Girls.  There was no scholarship entitlement to be
transferred but my father found the 4 which was the termly fee.  For
this I shall always be grateful.

TUESDAY, I2TH AUGUST

Last night was the hottest yet, and I again awoke to find myself lying
damply in a layer of sweat between skin and nightdress.

My secretary Joyce McLennan arrived very hot after her journey.

When her number 94 bus (which was following close behind another number
94 which she had just missed) reached Holland Park and she tried to get
off, the conductor shouted angrily to the passengers, "Jesus Christ!
You see what it's like?  Every time you try to overtake the bus in
front, someone wants to get off or on at a bus stop."  Joyce has worked
for me part-time since the publication of my seventh novel.
Intelligent, efficient, kind and unfailingly good-tempered, she is high
among the small group of friends on whom I can rely to keep me sane.

An interesting item in today's post.  A lady living in Lincoln's Inn,
knowing of my interest in old diaries, sent me one from her collection,
a W. Straker pocket diary for 1914.  There is no mention of the
original owner and all the entries are in pencil.  I think from the
handwriting that it was probably written by a man, and he begins every
day with a note of the temperature, the weather and the wind.  And
then, on 3Oth January, he notes that "Ethel retired as usual about 10
o'clock and must have hung herself soon afterwards," followed by the
note, "Ethel's last kiss and last goodnight."  There is no clue as to
who Ethel was: she could have been wife, sister or daughter, no grief
is expressed, no explanation given.

WEDNESDAY, I3TH AUGUST

A rather dull morning catching up with outstanding bills and the duller
kind of post.  Clare and her husband Lyn arrived in the afternoon, Lyn
bearing my birthday present of a camera.  It seems to me odd that I
have lived for seventy-seven years without ever having owned a camera.
It is, perhaps, a little late to begin photography.  Lyn, patient as
ever, spent some time explaining the camera's sophistications and then
we went outside and, among all the dust and rubble, found a relatively
clean corner and I took my first photograph of Clare.  Later, after Lyn
had left to have a haircut, Clare and I walked in the park and I
photographed her again in the Japanese garden.

In the afternoon I completed and sent to The Independent a review of
The Doctor, The Detective and Arthur Conan Doyle, Martin Booth's
biography of the writer.  He was a far more complex, indeed enigmatic
and in some respects contradictory, character than a recital of his
qualities would suggest.  But those qualities were formidable.  He
fought vigorously against injustice, whether in the Belgian Congo or at
home, advocated reform of the divorce laws which he saw as prejudiced
in favour of men, and campaigned vigorously and successfully on behalf
of prisoners who he considered had been wrongly convicted.  But he was
surprisingly naive, even gullible.  Admittedly he came to his belief in
spiritualism after careful weighing of the evidence, but that didn't
prevent him from being the victim of charlatans, and at the end of his
life he forfeited money, goodwill and admiration by his belief in
fairies, being taken in by a photograph which was a very obvious
childish hoax.

But neither virtue nor eccentricity would have justified this or his
previous biographies if he hadn't created Sherlock Holmes, the best
known of all fictional detectives.  The world appeal of the stories is
extraordinary.

I remember some years ago being in Tokyo to open an exhibition of crime
writing.  I was visited in my hotel by members of the Tokyo chapter of
the Sherlock Holmes Society.  They came in beaming, all wearing
deerstalker hats and shooting jackets and smoking meerschaum pipes.
What, I wondered, could they possibly have in common with this
fictional Victorian archetypal hero.  Martin Booth points out that the
plots of the Sherlock Holmes stories may be ingenious, but they

August 1997 33

are hardly credible.  Conan Doyle didn't care very much about
details.

The dog that didn't bark in the night is less mysterious than Dr.
Watson's dog, which disappeared completely.  The chronology is
sometimes confused, parts of London are inaccurately described and the
writing is occasionally slapdash.  None of this worried either Conan
Doyle or his readers.  A modern crime writer could wish that readers
today were so accommodating.  As the author himself wrote: "Accuracy of
detail matters little.  I have never striven for it and have made some
bad mistakes in consequence.  What matters is that I hold my readers."
He certainly did hold them, and he does so still.

The readers of detective fiction in the so-called Golden Age seemed
equally unconcerned about accuracy, particularly scientific or forensic
accuracy.  The methods of murder were ingenious indeed.  Webster tells
us that death has ten thousand doors to let out life, and the detective
story has made use of most of them.  It was not sufficient in the 19305
that the victim was murdered; he or she must be mysteriously,
ingeniously, bizarrely murdered.  Realism in the setting, psychological
subtlety in characterization, social concern, credibility; only too
often all were subjugated to the dominant need of the plot.

The writers of the thirties had very little knowledge and even less
apparent interest in forensic medicine or legal procedure.  Many of the
most eminent--some would say the best: Dorothy L. Sayers, Ngaio Marsh,
Margery Allingham--were women with no scientific training, and their
interest was far more in character, motive and plot than it was in
forensic realism.  Police methods were less well organized, less
sophisticated and less scientific than they are today, and readers far
less knowledgeable.

Even so, we re-read some of these books with a mixture of amusement and
incredulity.  Postmortems were invariably carried out by the local
general practitioner, presumably on the surgery couch after the evening
surgery, following which he would invariably be able to provide the
brilliant amateur detective with more information about precisely how
the victim died than a modern forensic pathologist would be able to
provide in a fortnight.  The policemen, honest if ineffectual, were
frequently mere foils to the talented amateur, or a species of country
bumpkin, cycling to the scene of crime while deferentially tugging
their forelocks to the gentry.

Typical of the books of the time is Dorothy L. Sayers's Busman's
Honeymoon, where the newly married Lord Peter Wimsey and his wife find
a corpse with a smashed skull in the cellar of their honeymoon
farmhouse.

Needless to say, no equivalent of the present-day scene-of-crime
officer arrives to inspect the scene, no photographs are thought
necessary, no one in the household suffers the indignity of having
fingerprints taken, and we are told that the table-top in the kitchen
is scrubbed ready to receive the corpse, although I am not sure whether
this implies that the police surgeon, Dr.  Craven, proposed to carry
out the autopsy on the kitchen table.  He certainly wrote a report for
the coroner before leaving the house, which seems quick work. Meanwhile
the detective settles down to enlist the help of Lord Peter while
exchanging appropriate quotations from The Oxford Book of English
Verse.

In some of Dorothy L. Sayers's novels specimens are indeed placed in
jars and sent to Sir James Lubbock, at the Home Office.  Sir James
seems to be a general-purpose forensic scientist, biologist, chemist,
document examiner and pathologist.  I picture him in his room at the
Home Office undertaking postmortems and examining specimens from all
over the country; a Napoleon of crime investigation.

Many of the books of the Golden Age are still being read with pleasure
today, an indulgence, perhaps, in nostalgia, fascination with the
ingenuity of the puzzle, or a. hankering for Mayhem Parva, for a more
homogeneous and peaceable world, a more assured and confident morality.
But they are not being written today.  The modern crime writer cannot
afford to ignore forensic medicine, nor does he or she wish to.

One reason for this change is, of course, the popularity of television
police and crime series.  Readers today know the difference between the
uniformed branch and the CID and are well aware of the function and the
importance of the forensic science service, if only because characters
in these series so frequently ask "Heard anything yet from Forensic,
Sarge?"  Realism, including scientific realism, has also been
encouraged by the modern fashion for professional detectives as opposed
to the old reliance on the omni-talented, eccentric and romanticized
amateur.

And those of us who aspire to create a credible professional detective
must take trouble over our research, not only into police procedure but
into modern scientific methods of investigating crime, including
forensic medicine.  The crime novel, like its readers, has changed
fundamentally since the last war.  Today the detective story is more
realistic about murder, more violent, more sexually explicit, less
assured in its affirmation of official law and order, moving ever
closer to the sensibilities and moral ambiguities of the so-called
"straight" novel.  Crime writers today know only too well that
corruption can lie at the very heart of law, that

August 1997 35

not all policemen are invariably honest, that murder is a contaminating
crime which changes all those who come into touch with it, in fiction
as in real life, and that although there may be--indeed must be--a
solution at the end of the detective novel and a kind of justice, it
can only be the fallible justice of men.

I enjoy doing my own research and am lucky in that my experience at the
Home Office and the friends I made at New Scotland Yard and in the
Forensic Science Service mean that expert advice is always available to
me, and I am grateful.  That doesn't mean the books are without
error.

I am most likely to make mistakes where I don't check because I am
confident that I already know.  An example is in A Taste for Death
where the bodies are discovered in the vestry of a church by Miss
Wharton, a gentle spinster who arrives early to dust the church and
arrange fresh flowers, accompanied by Darren, the young truant she has
befriended.  The discovery of the bodies is so horrific (an example of
the power of contrast in detective fiction) that the parish priest
sends her to take a recuperative holiday with his predecessor and his
wife in Nottingham.

I can't think why I chose Nottingham; Brighton, Bournemouth or
Scarborough would seem more appropriate.  Worse, I made her travel from
King's Cross, not St.  Pancras.  I received two letters, both from
women readers.  The first asked rather plaintively why Miss Wharton had
chosen to travel from King's Cross when she would have had to change
twice and the journey would have taken an extra hour.  The second wrote
that she fully understood Miss Wharton's dislike of St.  Pancras
Station and would never travel from it if she could avoid it.

Tonight I had dinner with Valerie Eliot in the Grill Room of the Cafe
Royal.  I love this room, which I think is one of the most beautiful
dining-rooms in London.  There were few people there, partly because
it's August, partly, I suspect, because of the heat.  Valerie talked
about T. S. Eliot and their life together and I listened, ate and felt
relaxed and cool.  Valerie dropped me home at about eleven.

THURSDAY, I4TH AUGUST

I woke at six with a feeling of vague unease, as if my mind were
struggling free from the last clinging threads of a bad dream.  It was
another

very hot night and I had slept fitfully.  Perhaps there had been a bad
dream, but I had no conscious memory of it.

I found myself thinking of my first and disastrous job in the Income
Tax office at Ely.  The examination for entry to the Clerical Class of
the Civil Service was taken at sixteen and I travelled up to London
with a school friend to take the examination, staying at the YWCA in
Blooms bury.  It was my first trip to London without an adult and I can
remember the excitement and enchantment of the city.  I suppose I must
have been seventeen by the time all the bureaucratic procedures had
been I

gone through and I was allocated to the Ely tax office.  I remember,
when '-"

I was successful in the examination, being sent a list of government
departments to which I could be sent, and the wonder now is why I chose
the Inland Revenue when the whole of the Civil Service was open to me.
I could have gone to London (always my ambition) and would have been
happy in any job which wasn't entirely concerned with figures.

The Inland Revenue was the worst possible choice.  I can't remember
that any other possibilities were ever discussed with me by anyone.  I
had left school, so my usual mentors weren't available and my father
obviously wanted me to follow him into the same job.  I can't think
why; he was never, I believe, really happy and would rather have been a
teacher if he had ever had a chance of further education after the age
of fifteen.

I can't remember how long I stayed at Ely--no more than eighteen
months, I think, before I resigned--but it seems in memory a time of
misery.  I began by finding a room in a boarding house where the cost,
although reasonable, left me nothing over but my weekly fare home.

There was one other new entrant, a boy with whom I had nothing in
common.  Even if we had liked each other, the friendship wouldn't have
been helped by the head of the office, who continually held him up to
me as an example.  The rest of the staff seemed to be old men, although
they couldn't have been much older than my father.  The Cathedral was
my one solace, but the little town seemed dreary and depressing.
Finally I left the boarding house and started travelling from Cambridge
to Ely each day.  This necessitated a very early start, a long cycle
ride to the station, the half-hour train journey and then a depressing
trudge to the tax office.

Ely has changed now, and seems attractive, even lively, particularly
the development on the waterfront.  When Jane, Peter and the
grandchildren were at Cambridge, we would motor over and have lunch at
the Old Fire Engine House.  I have been back to give a talk at the Arts
Centre.

August 1997 37

and last year to give the first Ely Lecture in the Cathedral.
Occasionally, too, the Liturgical Commission of the Church of England
meets at Ely in the pleasant diocesan conference centre.  On none of
these visits have I ever been burdened by this morning's weight of
vague irritation and regret.  I suppose I regret Ely because the
decision to take that particular job was so stupid.  And the fault was
mine.  Even at seventeen and with no one to talk over the
possibilities, I should have known better.

Those months of servitude were such a waste of youth, enthusiasm and
idealism.  But my time in the Ely tax office wasn't entirely wasted.
Nothing that happens to a novelist ever is.

By the time I had made my first pot of tea and fed my cat PollyHodge,
the unease had faded.  There is no point in regretting any part of the
past.  The past can't now be altered, the future has yet to be lived,
and consciously to experience every moment of the present is the only
way to gain at least the illusion of immortality.

FRIDAY, I5TH AUGUST

Has anyone discovered a really satisfactory way of reading comfortably
in bed?  For some of us this is virtually our only free time except
when on holiday.  Reading is so important, so necessary to the
nourishment of mind and spirit that I feel that it should be as
seriously ceremonial as a church service.  Ideally we need a
comfortable chair with back and arm support and good, well-directed
light, a rest for the book if it is too heavy to hold comfortably, a
small table with our favourite drink to hand, and silence and solitude.
It is an ideal that few of us are able to obtain.  I find in recent
years that I read far less new fiction and more nonfiction,
particularly letters, biography and autobiography, history and diaries.
This is nothing to be proud of; I ought to tackle more new fiction--and
the word "tackle" is appropriate--but there are still so many classics
unread, so many old favourites to comfort and entertain, and indeed to
find new pleasures in.  I like to have one old favourite and one new by
the bedside.

At present the old favourite is The Small House at Allington and the
new book--new to me only--is Sowing by Leonard Woolf, an autobiography
of the years 1880-1904.

I came to Anthony Trollope comparatively late, certainly in my mid38

thirties, but he has provided me since then with enormous pleasure. But
I wonder if he knew what a monster he had created in Lily Dale?
Admittedly Crosbie is a cad, but I can't help congratulating him on his
escape.

And I pity poor Mrs.  Dale, destined to spend her old age with a
resolutely single and masochistic Lily.  Similarly with The Golden
Bowl.  I wonder if Henry James expected us to sympathize with Maggie
Verver and her father, the millionaire American who first uses his
money to buy a suitable husband for his daughter in the person of the
Prince, and then, when her marriage results in his loneliness, buys a
suitable wife for himself in the person of her husband's ex-lover. This
is to suggest that writers occasionally don't know what or whom they
have created, which is surely a nonsense.

Leonard Woolf's Sowing, which in this edition is only 176 pages long
and which I finished in an evening, is only the first volume of his
autobiography and covers his childhood and the five years at Trinity
College, Cambridge, where he was a friend of Thoby Stephen, Lytton
Strachey, and a group of young men who were to become the Apostles and
the founders of the Bloomsbury Group.  He first saw Thoby's two
sisters, Vanessa and Virginia Stephen, one summer afternoon in Thoby's
rooms.

They were wearing white dresses and large hats and carrying parasols,
and he writes that their beauty literally took his breath away.  They
were staying with their cousin, Miss Catherine Stephen, who was
Principal of Newnham, and who was with them, not in her capacity as
cousin, but as chaperone, since in 1901 a sister was not allowed to see
her brother in his rooms in a male college except in the presence of a
chaperone.

The rules of chaperonage were certainly much less severe when Connor
was at St.  Catharine's College, but there were still restrictions. The
porter took a lively interest in any women who came and went in the
evenings and we were supposed to be out of the gate by ten at the
latest.

An edict was issued that ladies in college when the air-raid alarm
sounded must go immediately to the Master's Lodge where they would sit
with the Master's wife in her drawing-room until the All-Clear.  I am
not sure whether this was because college authorities feared that the
excitement of a possible air raid would induce lascivious emotions, or
to prevent us staying past the allotted time on the excuse that it was
far too dangerous to venture out on the streets.  The first siren note
was the signal for a hurried mass exodus of women.  Today sex for
students seems to be almost compulsory.  Their lives may be more
liberated, but I doubt whether they have as much fun.

August 1997 39

I have never felt comfortable with the Bloomsbury Group, strongly
disliking their snobbery, their intellectual arrogance, their
selfishness and their rudeness.  So why, I wonder, do they exert such a
fascination for me?  In the years when Woolf and his contemporaries
were at Trinity, Henry James was writing at the height of his powers.
As students they read The Sacred Fount, The Wings of the Dove and The
Golden Bowl as they came out.  They thought there was an element of
ridiculousness in the novels which made it impossible to rank them with
the greatest, but they were entranced and almost hypnotized by the
strange Jamesian convoluted beauty and subtlety which act upon those
who yield to them like drink or drugs.

Leonard Woolf describes how, after he and Virginia Stephen were married
in 1912, Virginia acted for a short time as secretary for Roger Fry's
second post-impressionist exhibition at the Grafton Galleries, and
Henry James came to tea, which was served in the basement.  As he
talked he tilted back his chair till it was balanced on the two back
legs and maintained this equilibrium by holding on to the edge of the
table.

Henry James did this whenever he came to tea with the Stephen family
and as his long sentences untwined themselves the chair would slowly
tilt backwards and the children's eyes would be fixed on it, hoping
that it would finally overbalance and deposit James on the floor.  Time
after time he managed to recover himself, but indeed one day it did
happen.

The chair went over and the novelist, undismayed, was flung on the
floor.  He was unhurt and, after a moment, completed his
characteristically ceremonious and flowery sentence.

SUNDAY, I/TH AUGUST

To Oxford yesterday to be Guest of Honour at a crime weekend at St.

Hilda's College, of which I am an Honorary Fellow.

I was to have seen a friend for lunch at the Old Parsonage, but she
rang to say that she has a virus so I kept the table booking and went
with Alixe Buckerfield de la Roche, a friend who lives in my house in
Oxford.

She was deeply concerned about two recent student suicides at Oxford. A
postgraduate student hanged herself at the end of term and Alixe
witnessed the terrible distress of her parents and young brother at

the Somerville College memorial service.  The suicide of the young is
more common now than it was in my youth.  I can't recall the suicide of
a single friend or acquaintance during my childhood or adolescence.
Perhaps today we all take happiness as our right and unhappiness is
seen as shameful and insupportable.  Or is it that some people have an
imperfect appreciation of linear time?  For them, the present moment is
immeasurable, fixed in an eternal agony.  There can be no hope that
things will be better tomorrow, because the idea of a tomorrow has no
reality.

Sitting in the garden in St.  John Street I thought of the words of
William Blake which I quoted in An Unsuitable Job for a Woman:

Down the winding cavern we groped our tedious way, till a void
boundless as the nether sky appeared beneath us, and we held by the
roots of trees and hung over this immensity; but I said: if you please
we will commit ourselves to this void and see whether providence is
here also.

It is wonderful prose, but hardly helpful in the context of
self-destruction.

If providence is not there we shan't be aware even of
disillusionment.

I returned to London by the 7:10 bus this morning, a good time to
travel before the heat of the day.  The sun was a smudged silver ball
and the sheep seemed to move sluggishly through that early morning
mist.

Polly-Hodge wasn't waiting for me at the door as she usually is, but
came through the cat-flap into the kitchen as soon as I put on the
kettle for the tea I didn't wait to make in Oxford.  She must have been
sleeping in someone's coal-house, if such a thing now exists, as the
top of her head was black.  She looked diminished and a little un
cared-for, which she always manages to do if left for more than a day,
even though provided with fresh food and water.

I read the Sunday papers with little enthusiasm.  Do the public really
care about the antics of the Princess of Wales and her lover?  Then to
ii o'clock Mass at All Saints, Margaret Street, where Prebendary
Gaskill preached on death, an unusual choice of subject.  He touched on
the last rites.  The thought that the last physical sensation of a
Christian would be the touch of holy oil on the forehead is seemly, but
I wonder how often that happens in practice.  Death, after all, seldom
comes when invited or by appointment.  We are likely to take our last
breath, whether peaceful, gasping, in pain, or mercifully unconscious,
in a place we

August 1997 41

wouldn't have chosen.  And even if our loved ones have managed to
manoeuvre their way through the traffic and have avoided hold-ups on
the motorway to arrive at the hospital in time, essentially we all die
alone.  They will see us but we shall not see them.  The most I hope
for is a sight of the sky.  The last person I watched as she lay dying
had had nothing to look at during those last few days of consciousness
but the wall of her hospital room and, beyond it, a claustrophobically
close wall of grey London stone.

I slept in the afternoon.  There were letters unwritten and papers
unsorted.  Not a productive day, but not an unhappy one, despite the
thoughts about death.

MONDAY, ISTH AUGUST

Today I left for Cambridge by the 10:30 train from King's Cross which
took less than an hour.  The service to Cambridge is now remarkably
quick and comfortable.  In my childhood the fast trains went always to
Liverpool Street and the slower to King's Cross, but the opposite is
now true.  The old Liverpool Street station was, for me, the gateway to
London, a terminus of excitement and romance.  I had arranged for a car
to meet me at Cambridge, which took me to Swavesey to visit an elderly
sick friend, Doris Wheatley, now chair-bound, and her friend and
caretaker, Kay Harper.

After lunch to Clare's cottage in Orchard Street where I rested during
the afternoon for an hour before a car called for me to take me to the
BBC studios in Hills Road for the recording of a radio autobiography.

The producer, Mandy Morton, had devised a programme in which I should
talk about my life and work, interspersing those segments with
illustrative readings from the novels.  It was a long evening's work,
lasting from a quarter to seven to a quarter past ten, and I was
grateful that the air conditioning meant that the studio was very
cool.

Mandy had brought with her a ration book and an identity card from the
war to refresh my memory.  They had been lent to her by a lady over
eighty who frequently broadcasts about her life and the war years, and
who had also written a note reminding me of the rations during the time
of the worst shortages: two ounces of butter a week, six ounces of
other

fats--usually four of lard and two of margarine, a quarter of a pound
of tea.  The system was that we all registered with a butcher and a
grocer.

This meant, of course, that the registrations and the address on the
books had to be changed when people moved.  This was one of the jobs I
did during my time with a local office of the Ministry of Food in
Christ's College and I can remember a succession of extremely young,
pretty girls, the new wives of Air Force fighter and bomber pilots, who
came in with their ration books to be changed.  I wondered how many of
them were very shortly to be widows.

Our lives in war-time, particularly those of us with young children,
seemed to be dominated by food; where to get it, how to cook it, how to
make the most of what was available.  It was possible to register as a
vegetarian, and those who did so received an extra weekly allowance of
cheese.  In large families, I remember, one or more members would
register as vegetarians with general advantage to the family diet.
There was a points system for tinned and other goods and things came on
or off points as they were available.  We would queue for fish, or for
anything else which was not on the ration and which occasionally would
be delivered to a particular shop.  The news would soon get round and
the queue would lengthen.

From 1943 until the end of the war in Europe, I lived in a beautiful,
now demolished, house at Chigwell Row in Essex, called White Hall.

The owners, Dr.  and Mrs.  Price-Watts, had made a flat for their
daughter in-law which she now no longer needed and which I took over.
There were tall elms in the garden, noisy with rooks, and the local
butcher had the idea of shooting them, then selling the car cases back
to Mrs.  Price Watts.  Her cook did, indeed, make rook pie on one
occasion, which I was invited to share.  I can remember a tangle of
extremely sharp and small bones and virtually no meat, but the gravy
was excellent.

And I can remember--which of my generation can't?--the particular
culinary horrors of war: Woolton pie, composed of vegetables and
sausage meat more crumb than sausage, and brown Windsor soup which
tasted of gravy browning.  And we got very tired of carrots.  At one
time there was a glut of them and we were showered with a plethora of
Ministry of Food leaflets extolling the virtues of carrot soup, carrot
casserole and carrot cake.  Carrots, we were told, were particularly
good for our eyes.  It was because of the carrots they ate that our
gallant airmen were successful in shooting down so many enemy planes.
Woolton pie and brown Windsor soup featured largely on the menu of the
British Restau

August 1997 43

rants set up under the aegis of the Ministry of Food to provide
inexpensive and healthy meals.  In this I think they largely succeeded.
Despite shortages and occasional real hunger the country was remarkably
healthy.

A red-letter day for us was the arrival of a parcel from India, where
my husband, by now a qualified doctor, was serving with the Royal Army
Medical Corps.  It contained tea and some tins of unspecified meat, but
the great joy was a round tin of butter.  It was very pale, salt less,
and tasted rather like newly made farm butter.  I suppose I should have
doled it out over the days, but I couldn't resist one glorious
splurge.

I would sit Jane in her high chair and we would feast on toast
liberally soaked with butter.

It was on one such day when I was feeding fingers of toast into Jane's
buttery mouth that I heard on the radio (which we then called the
wireless) the news of the dropping of the atomic bomb.  I can still
recall the mixture of awe and triumph in the announcer's voice when he
said, "We have unleashed against the enemy the power of the sun
itself."  I knew that the dropping of the bomb would almost certainly
bring Connor home earlier and probably safely.  But it was still, for
me, a moment of horror and, looking almost aghast at my two happy,
buttery daughters, innocently unconscious of the meaning of what we
were hearing, I knew that for all of us the world had changed for
ever.

TUESDAY, I9TH AUGUST

Back from Cambridge to a very heavy weight of post which Joyce and I
tackled this afternoon.  This is one of the penalties, or at least
disadvantages, of fame.  I receive numerous requests for photographs,
signatures, signed books to sell at auctions in aid of local worthy
causes (this is becoming so popular that my stock of hardbacks is now
depleted), advice on work in progress or help with a personal problem.
There is an expectation that I am an expert on law, real-life murder,
civil liberties and the constitution.  Then there are requests to
present prizes at school speech days, talk to writers' groups or take
part in a proliferation of literary festivals, here and overseas. Bulky
packages arrive with depressing frequency, containing the manuscript of
a novel with a request that I

should either advise how to get it published, write a foreword or
provide a quote for publicity.

Some afternoons, like today, we tackle the dreaded "pending" file to
which inevitably we consign the most difficult time-consuming letters
in the hope that they will somehow answer themselves.  Very
occasionally they do.  It seems churlish not to reply to kind and
enthusiastic letters from readers or to refuse to help people trying to
repair the church spire or provide books for their primary school, but
it all takes up time I should be devoting to this memoir and I haven't
the ruthlessness--or perhaps I lack the courage--to follow the example
of Nancy Mitford, who sent out postcards simply stating "Nancy Mitford
is unable to do what you ask."  Meanwhile the fax machine slowly spews
out its messages and the telephone rings.

I pondered this evening that I couldn't have foreseen all this busyness
when Cover Her Face was published in 1962.  But then I remembered that
my first appearance in print was much earlier, in 1935 or 1936 when I
won a short story prize at the Cambridge High School for Girls and my
winning entry was published in the school magazine.  I wish I still had
a copy.  As far as I remember the action took place on a South Sea
island where a group of characters were marooned.  How?  Why?  When?
Memory is mercifully blank.  One of the party was desperately ill and
required a rare drug which fortuitously arrived when a small biplane
crashed on the island.  I suspect that my story was low in credibility
but high on drama and atmosphere.

The announcement of the prize was one of the highlights of the five
very happy years from eleven to sixteen which I spent at the school.
The s school uniform was a dark green gym slip, square yoked, with
three large *

box pleats fore and aft to allow for adolescent swellings, a garment in
which even the most graceful figure tended to look clumsy.  Girls who
had achieved a place in the Second XI hockey team wore a pale blue
sash, those in the First a green sash with a thin blue line.  When I
first read |

Muriel Spark's The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie I felt an immediate
kinship with her characters leaning across their bicycles wearing their
hat brims at different angles.  Ours were normally worn turned up at
the back and down at the front, but there were a few adventurous
spirits who wore the brim turned down at the back.  We wore the same
uniform for games, and for gym took off our tunics and performed our
disciplined contortions in our blouses and dark green knickers.  There
were no showers and no personal lockers; coats and hats and any
belongings were hung on

August 1997 45

pegs in the cloakroom.  Nothing in the whole of my time at the
Cambridge High School was ever stolen.

Most of the girls came from the lower-middle or working class; the
daughters of university dons and professional men were more likely to
go to the Perse School, which was our greatest rival and against whom
we played ferocious games of hockey with much clashing of sticks and
shouts of encouragement.  I wasn't good at games but I was fleet of
foot and achieved a precarious place in the Second XI.

There was no member of staff employed to look after our psychological
or moral welfare.  I think all teachers at that time saw it as part of
their job to instill accepted values of personal morality, social
responsibility and good behaviour.  It requires an immense effort of
imagination to picture what the reaction would have been had a girl
ever become pregnant.  No doubt she would have suddenly disappeared
from school, indeed from Cambridge, with soothing explanations of
mysterious illness or the need to stay with distant relations.  Sex was
never discussed, not even in biology lessons, which formed part of
General Science in the syllabus.  My memory is of producing evil smells
from test-tubes with little understanding of the process, experiments
with iron filings and magnets, and being told that the atom was the
smallest possible element of matter and as such could be neither split
nor destroyed.  It is ironic to remember that it was even then being
split a mile or less away at the Cavendish Laboratory!

Not only was sex a taboo subject but there was an extraordinary
reticence about natural functions, including menstruation.  I can
remember cycling home--I suppose I was about twelve at the time--with a
school friend and suggesting that we should hike up the Gog Magog Hills
on Saturday afternoon.  She replied in a deeply mysterious voice that
she couldn't because she wouldn't be well.  As she seemed, as usual, in
the rudest of health, I was curious as to why she was expecting such a
misfortune, but she would only reply: "Ask your mother."  I didn't ask
my mother; parents were the last people to be asked about anything
potentially embarrassing.  I think my mother did make an attempt when I
was younger to prepare me for menstruation, but the explanation must
have been incomplete since I somehow got the idea that it occurred once
a year; when it did, I complained bitterly that August was a bad month
to have started since all future summer holidays would be
inconvenienced!

I can also remember that my great anxiety was how on earth, if I
married, I could conceal this regular event from my husband.  I took it
for

granted that it was a sacred female mystery and that, by disclosing it,
I should be a traitor to the whole of my sex.

I suppose that nothing demonstrates the difference in attitudes more
clearly than watching television advertisements for sanitary protection
where young women wearing tightly fitting white trousers leap in and
out of sports cars with happy cries of liberation.  There was no
internal protection in the 19305 and the commercial sanitary towels
were made of cotton wool, cumbersome, not very absorbent and liable to
chafe.

There were loops at either end for attachment to a belt, giving them
the name "bunnies."  We bought them in Boots the Chemist at a special
counter presided over by a grey-haired nurse in full uniform with a
great winged cap who handed over the embarrassing package with
practised discretion.

But these commercial sanitary towels were expensive and poorer families
cut up old sheets into squares, which were hemmed and folded into a
kind of bandage, attached to the waist-band with safety pins.  Our
Victorian forebears had probably coped with just the same
unsatisfactory contrivance.  Modern sanitary protection is one small
victory of modern technology over biological inconvenience, and perhaps
not such a small one.

Many of the lessons of Cambridge High School have remained with me
although I am not sure whether the classroom in which they were taught
still exists.  Not long after I left, the school moved to new premises.
But fifty years ago we were next door to the Art School, the windows of
which overlooked the hard tennis courts and the net ball court and from
which one of the art students, the young Ronald Searle, could look down
on our energetic galumphings.  He was even then gaining a reputation as
an artist, although I prefer to believe that the allegation that he
took us High School girls and, in particular, one dark tousle-haired
specimen, as models for the harridans of St. Trinian's, is a canard.
For one thing, we seldom wore pigtails.  They were more typical of our
rivals at the Perse School, one of the many subtle social
distinctions.

Our hair was bobbed, shingled or pudding-basin trimmed under the blue
felt hats of winter and our summer panamas.

And how good we were, or rather, how biddable.  Admittedly my best
friend and I did one afternoon play truant as a gesture to some ill
defined need for self-expression and cycled up the Gog Magog Hills
where we brewed up tea and fried sausages in our Girl Guide billy
cans.

I can't recall that it was particularly enjoyable and it must have
neces

August 1997 47

sitated some fibbing since this wasn't a school where absences went
unnoticed.

We were well behaved by conditioning, not by nature.  When children are
en masse, barbarism always lurks beneath the surface.  We knew our
limitations--this was not the age of child-centred education--but a
timid, inexperienced teacher or one still in training could be given a
hard time.  Not, however, when it came to her examination lesson, at
which the examiner would sit at the side of the class, notebook
unobtrusively in hand.  Here fair play, unstated but instinctively
understood, took over.

We would sit bolt upright, bright-eyed, hands shooting up like pistons
to answer the questions.  By the time my younger daughter went to a
teacher-training college in the 19605 such a class--attentive,
disciplined and obviously learning--would probably have disqualified
the student from any chance of becoming a teacher.

History, my second favourite subject and taught by Miss Back, was pure
pleasure.  I never knew her Christian name.  I doubt whether any of the
form did.  Sixty years ago that was privileged information although
those girls given to pas lies made it their business to discover the
secret and pass it on in giggling triumph to their friends.  But I
can't remember that anyone had a "pash" on Miss Back.  She exuded
common sense, a rational and cheerful dignity which wasn't conducive to
such follies.  I knew nothing of her life outside the school.  I
remember seeing her one Saturday evening at a meeting of the Peace
Pledge Union to which I had gone out of curiosity; then, as now, I was
a non-joiner but an indefatigable taster of ideas.  Was she a convinced
pacifist?  It is impossible to think of her as other than totally
rejecting the madness of war, yet I remember that I was surprised to
find her at the meeting, perhaps because we could never quite believe
that the staff had any life outside the classroom.  Did we imagine that
they disappeared each evening into some chalky limbo until summoned by
the morning assembly bell?  Yet if she was a member of the PPU we were
never indoctrinated with pacifism or with any other opinion.  She saw
her job as teaching, not as proselytizing, and yet I am in no doubt of
the values--liberal, Christian, scholarly--by which she lived.

We were taught, as much by example as precept, to respect our minds and
to use them; to examine the evidence before rushing in with our
opinions; to distinguish between fact and theory; to see history
through the eyes of the poor and vanquished, not merely those of the
powerful and the conquerors; not to believe that something is true
simply because

it would be pleasant or convenient if it were and, when exposed to
propaganda, to ask ourselves, "In whose interest is it that I should
believe this?"

Like all the staff except for one widow, Miss Back was a spinster and
we took this for granted as we took so much.  The post 1914-18 war
generation of women, robbed by the holocaust of Flanders of their
chance of marriage and motherhood, may have resented their loss, yet in
retrospect they seemed to have been neither bitter nor unhappy and the
generation they taught, born in the aftermath of that war and destined
to reach adulthood at the beginning of the next, benefited from an
education which wasn't circumscribed by the demands of the teacher's
husband and family.  That dedication, too, we took for granted,
flourishing unthinking on their deprivation.  But even if their chances
of finding a husband had been greater, we still wouldn't have been
taught by a married woman.  In those years--and indeed until the
war--marriage meant resignation from the job.

English was marvellously taught, by Miss Scargill and Miss Dalgliesh,
after whom I named my detective, Adam Dalgliesh.  Years later when she
had retired to Edinburgh I visited her after speaking at the book
festival and she told me that her father had been called Adam.  It
never occurred to either teacher that we were incapable of enjoying
Shakespeare or reading the great English poets or the major
novelists.

Miss Dalgliesh would, I suspect, have been incredulous to read today's
A-level syllabus.  Before the war, even at the level of what was then
called the School Certificate, we learned more English literature than
many present-day applicants for the English School at university.

And we enjoyed a remarkable continuity of devotion.  It was rare indeed
for a teacher to leave the High School except by retirement.  We were
not faced at a critical stage of our pre-examination work by new faces,
different methods, unknown personalities.  And the school was the right
size, large enough to be a lively and diverse community, small enough
for each girl to be individually known.  We didn't waste time carrying
our books from classroom to classroom or building to building at the
dictates of a complicated timetable.  We all had our own place, our
desk, chosen in a noisy scramble at the beginning of a new school year
where, surrounded by our cronies, we could create our small island of
security.  In our lidded desks we could arrange our exercise and text
books, fountain pen and pencils and small possessions, knowing that we
should find them each morning precisely as we had left them.

August 1997 49

In the educational system between the wars there were, of course,
wrongs to be remedied and the worst have been remedied.  But I
sometimes wonder whether we haven't lost almost as much as we have
gained.

I am not sorry that I was at school at a time when the word "kid" was
reserved for the young of goats.

SATURDAY, 23RD AUGUST

A memorable day.  I caught the Oxford Tube--that convenient intercity
coach--at Netting Hill Gate at 8:40 and had a trouble-free and quiet
journey.  I stopped at Gloucester Green for an iced coffee, and then to
St.

John Street where I chatted to Alixe while watering the garden.  The
sky was overcast with the promise of rain which never came, but there
was a slight breeze and the morning was less oppressive than in
London.

My youngest grandchild Beatrice arrived to drive me to her home where
her father Peter was cooking the lunch while listening to the ball
by-ball BBC cricket programme.  Jane had been feeling under the weather
and had vigorously cleaned the house, it being her policy that the less
agreeable chores are best kept for unpropitious occasions; feeling
really well inclines her to pleasure, not duty.  Peter interrupted his
cooking to pour me a glass of wine and I gossiped with Jane until lunch
was ready, an excellent meal of mixed grilled fish and oven-baked
vegetables in olive oil.

In the afternoon we drove to Rousham and walked in the gardens.

We saw very few other people and the ordered beauty of lawns and trees
was wonderfully refreshing, particularly the view down to the lake with
the water-lilies in flower and the golden carp sliding under the dark
green surface.  We visited the kitchen garden and then sat in the rose
garden, Jane and I in silence, listening and inhaling the subtle scents
of high summer, while Peter roamed among the rose beds.  I thought that
I could not have felt happier anywhere else in the world, however
beautiful, but then I often think this in England.  It is a great
disincentive to the ardours, dangers, delays and inevitable
disappointments of travel.  And a perfect day should be recorded.  It
can't be relived except in memory but it can be celebrated and
remembered with gratitude.

MONDAY, 2JTH AUGUST

Sunday was a non-productive day.  I meant to go to Mass at n o'clock
but indolence overcame me.  I slept for an hour in the afternoon, which
was unwise as I had some difficulty getting to sleep last night and was
awoken in the early hours by a noisy party in a flat in the Mews which
went on until 3 o'clock.  I like to sleep with my window open and one
of the drawbacks of summer nights is the increase in noise.  Tonight
the constant loud thud of a pop group was particularly obnoxious.

The small hours are the worst to lie awake in.  I switched on the
bedside light and tried to read--P.  G. Wodehouse or Nancy Mitford are
the best providers of consolation in the treacherous small hours-but
couldn't get comfortable and my eyes felt tired and kept watering,
smudging my spectacles.  I have friends who overcome insomnia, or at
least cope with it, by getting up and making tea, but this seems like
giving in to sleeplessness.  I tried to relax, hoping to slide into
unconsciousness.

In theory I could use these uninterrupted hours to think about the next
book; after all, I am the first to complain that there isn't enough
solitary thinking time.  But at three in the morning the mind slips
free of conscious control and the thoughts which come are more often
depressing than creative.

Last night I found myself back in Cambridge.  I can't remember how old
I was when my mother was compulsorily admitted to Fulbourne Mental
Hospital, nor can I remember how long it was before she came home
again.  The weeks, perhaps months, before she was finally compulsorily
detained must have been extremely difficult, particularly for my
father, but for me they are a complete blank, except for one incident.
I was in the double bed asleep with my sister when Father came in and
asked me to go quickly and fetch Mrs.  Mallett, one of our neighbours.
I put on shoes and my coat and ran down the street.  There was a small
pile of gravel deposited there by workmen who were surfacing the road
and I ran into this and fell and lay for a moment winded but unhurt.  I
can remember nothing further of that night except my father coming in
after Mrs.  Mallett had left and ruffling my hair.  It was a gesture of
tenderness which I don't remember him ever making during my childhood
except

August 1997 51

at that moment.  There must have been others, perhaps when I was very
young, but this is the only one I remember.

I would go with him every Saturday to visit Mother in hospital, my
brother and sister being left at home.  All I recall of this is the
occasional bus ride--a miscellaneous group of passengers making the
same journey for the same purpose--the driveway up to the hospital and
the smell of the ward.  The drug used in those days to sedate the
patient permeated clothes, hair, the air we breathed.  The visits were
always painful.  My mother would sit clutching at her hospital dress
with restless fingers, looking at us imploringly and constantly
reiterating her wish to come home.

While she was away we initially managed.  My father had always been
extremely capable and, though not demonstrative, he was certainly
dutiful.

He did his best.  Most of the shopping was done on his way home from
the office and I cooked the evening meal and the meals at weekends, and
tried, with the help of Monica and Edward, to keep the house reasonably
clean.  The biggest problem was washing; these were the days before
washing machines or detergent and it was a problem ensuring that the
three of us had clean clothes for Monday school.

And then Dusty arrived.  She was a young--but not particularly
young--woman living with her sister in Roseford Road, and came by the
day to help look after us.  I can't imagine why she was living with her
sister or why she should have taken the job, since I can't believe that
she was paid more than a pittance.  I suppose it was convenient as she
only had about thirty yards to walk each morning.  She was tall, rangy,
with bright eager eyes behind large spectacles, a wide mouth and dark
springy hair.  Her two great pleasures, indeed obsessions, were the
National Front, to which she belonged, and the Women's League of Health
and Beauty founded by Prunella Stack.  She went off to meetings of the
former wearing black trousers and a black turtleneck shirt.  Once she
took me to a demonstration of the Women's League, and I can recall the
rows of women in black satin tight-fitting pants and white blouses,
waving and stretching their arms, bending and twisting in unison, an
extraordinary if not unimpressive sight.

Dusty made no attempt to indoctrinate us into her Fascist beliefs and
as far as I can recall they consisted of admiring the young men who
went to the meetings, and of being intensely, if naively, patriotic.  I
often wonder what happened to her when the war broke out and
disillusionment set in.  But she was kind, even-tempered and cheerful,
finding no diffi

culty in coping with my father, and while she was with us life was
changed for the better.

One memory is particularly acute.  It happened very soon after she
arrived.  I went up to my bedroom and there, lying folded on the sill
beside the open window so that it was aired by the sun, was a clean,
ironed nightdress.  It is still a powerful image of conscientious
caring and it lifted my heart.  After trying, not always successfully,
to cope with housekeeping and school, I was going to be looked after.

Of we three children I think it was my sister Monica who suffered the
most from Mother's illness.  Monica was Mother's favourite child.  I
had the privilege of seniority and was regarded as my father's
favourite, and Edward was the youngest and the boy.  Monica in between,
the least enviable position in any family, always felt herself at a
disadvantage.

When, a few weeks ago, I talked to her about that time in our lives,
she said that no one had ever explained to her what had happened.  I
had merely told her and Edward one morning that I was taking them for a
long walk.  When we returned, Mother had disappeared.  Monica didn't
see her for nearly two years and wasn't even told what had happened to
her.  I find this astonishing but I believe it to be true.  I must have
thought that Father was explaining things to her; he must have thought
that I would do it.  Certainly I can't remember that I ever discussed
my visits to the hospital with either of my siblings.  If I did indeed
leave Monica in ignorance, then I had failed her in a matter more
important than cooking breakfast, keeping the house clean and seeing
that she had a clean blouse for school on Monday.

WEDNESDAY, 2/TH AUGUST

My elder grandson's wedding day.  His bride (an Australian, whose
family came from Malta) wanted a civil ceremony with no one else
present except themselves and their two witnesses.  It rained heavily
all morning, but I hope it was fine for their ceremony.  There is to be
a church blessing to which the family will be invited on 4th October in
Blythburgh church.

Yesterday I went from Victoria to Horsham, where brother Edward met me
and took me to his and his wife Mary's new home in Henfield.

August 1997 53

I felt rather ashamed not to have visited them earlier, but we had a
good day with much family talk.  After lunch Edward and I explored the
village, which has some very agreeable Regency houses, and then took
his usual path along the edge of a field of linseed where we sat
together in the strong light of the setting sun and gazed over the
golden-brown field towards the Downs.  We spoke about childhood and I
asked Edward if he had a memory of a single childhood birthday.  My own
seventy-seventh had reminded me that I couldn't remember any early
birthday celebrations.

Neither could he.

It seemed to us, talking gently together, that our childhood had been
lived on a plateau of apprehension with occasional peaks of acute
anxiety or fear.  That may have been good for me as a writer, less
good, I suspect, for my sister and brother.  We were always afraid of
my father, as indeed were most of our friends who, when they came to
the house, did so with some apprehension.  Perfect love may cast out
fear, but fear is remarkably potent in casting out love.  I think that
my father would have liked children who were more affectionate, even
while his severity inhibited the open affection of which I think he had
received so little in his own childhood.

One of the characteristics which caused us most embarrassment was his
almost pathological reluctance to part with money.  I remember the
misery at the beginning of each term in trying to extract from him my
games sub, which I think was either a shilling or one-and-sixpence in
old money.  I was constantly reprimanded for my carelessness in
forgetting it.

I could never, of course, have brought myself to say that I had asked
for it without success and was too frightened to go on asking.

Father was an indefatigable gardener, but the garden was disciplined
rather than tended.  The result was always spectacular.  Everything
flourished in his hands.  The garden at Roseford Road was a rough plot
when he bought the newly built house, his first overambitious house
purchase, and he set to work to produce order and plenty in strict
geometrical patterns.

A square lawn on which we were not permitted to tread was laid front
and back.  Straight paths were bisected by others at right angles.

Vegetables sprouted in precise rows; peas which were never picked until
the pods were yellowing, cabbages with hearts as tight as footballs. It
was almost intolerable for him to see anything picked.  Despite the
abundance my mother would creep out surreptitiously to pull up a
cabbage where it would be less noticed--always a hopeless task--or to
dig up a single root of potatoes, carefully smoothing over the soil.  I
grew to real54

that Father's childhood had been insecure and that, when he began work
at fifteen in the Patents Office in London and had to support himself
on a meagre wage, he would sometimes go hungry.  The garden represented
security and abundance.  But from time to time, perhaps to impress,
perhaps to buy popularity, he would invite colleagues from the office
to come and plunder, and they would move among the bean stalks and the
peas happily filling their baskets while my mother watched with
understandable resentment from the kitchen window.

I can understand my father's insecurity because, for most of my early
life, I shared it.  When I was a child I couldn't settle to sleep until
I had entered into my private world.  My imaginings were always the
same: I am in a low, large, single-storey building in the Bull Ring in
Ludlow.  It is composed of innumerable bedrooms, each containing an
immense bed.  There are hundreds of us sleeping there and in the middle
of one of the beds I am anonymously huddled.  Outside the building,
guards parade, perpetually on watch.  No one knows where I am and I
couldn't be safer.  Thus protected securely, I am able to get to sleep.
I can't remember at what age I let go of this nightly ritual.

After we moved from Ludlow to Cambridge, we ate as a family only
occasionally on Sunday.  We three children and my mother ate in the
kitchen and my father had his lunch and dinner brought to him on a tray
in the dining-room.  I can remember Mother placing it down before him
with an expression compounded of resentment and slight apprehension;

being brought up in a boys' boarding school was no training for a good
cook.  Even when she was in hospital and I took over the cooking,
Father would still eat on his own.  I now realize that, like me, he
needed at least one period of absolute solitude during the day and
perhaps this was his way of ensuring that he got it.

My father was a great deal more affectionate to his grandchildren than
to his children, as often happens, and when he was old and living alone
in a small house at Southwold, I grew to admire the qualities he had
always possessed: independence, courage and his own brand of sardonic
humour.  Unfortunately these are not the qualities which are most
important to small children.  But his own life wasn't easy.  He began
work at fifteen, fought in the First World War as a sergeant in the
Machine gun Corps, and spent all his working life in a job which gave
him small satisfaction.  I like to think that his last years were
happy.  In his old age I began to realize how much I loved him.  But
then, I think I always had.

August 1997 55

We had dinner at the local restaurant and then went home to bed.

Edward gave me a copy of an Australian publication about the history of
the 2i5th Battalion in 1940-45 which made mention of our fathers
youngest brother, Padre Jimmy James, who served with the Battalion and
won the Military Cross for going unaccompanied in a jeep to the German
lines to recover the bodies of dead comrades.  He was, apparently, the
only padre to receive the ME.  I met him and his wife on one of my
publicity visits to Australia and have an earlier memory of him when he
came to London to march in the victory celebrations following the end
of the war.

Edward, now seventy-four, is almost blind in one eye and has impaired
sight in the second.  Apparently the near-blindness is due to
deterioration which can't be corrected, so that he has to face the
certainty of blindness.  He bears it all with his usual stoicism and
now listens to audiotapes instead of reading.  He is still able to
garden and to see most of his shrubs.

Returning this morning I was met at Victoria by Frances Fyfield, who
took me in a taxi to Camden Passage, where we spent an agreeable half
hour trying on jewellery (but not buying) before having an excellent
lunch at Frederick's.

SUNDAY, 31ST AUGUST

On Thursday to Southwold for a long weekend with Francoise Manvell.

I first met Franchise when I was invited, and went to, Boston
University for three months to teach the detective story or, as they
say in the United States, the mystery.  She is now a widow but was then
married to Roger Manvell, who was teaching film at Boston.  They were
both kind and hospitable to me and I welcomed the companionship of
compatriots when living abroad for even a few months.  Fran9oise is not
strictly speaking a compatriot; she is French and lived in Paris during
the occupation and liberation, a time which is fascinating for me to
hear about.

We arranged to travel to Southwold separately, as Fran9oise drove
herself from Oxford.  I caught my usual train from Liverpool Street and
arrived in time to share a lunch of smoked salmon sandwiches in the

conservatory with Clare and Lyn who were already there.  Clare was
peeling apples to make chutney, and the strong smell of apples, vinegar
and spices pervaded the kitchen and will undoubtedly remind me of this
weekend whenever I smell it again.  Francoise arrived shortly after
four.

The weekend has been spent resting, walking, talking and, on Friday,
driving to Leiston, where Franchise and I enjoyed ourselves hunting in
the Trading Post.  The owner clears houses and her huge shed-like shop
has the attraction of a childish treasure trove.  Apart from the fun of
occasionally finding a treasure or a domestic object needed but no
longer made, there is something poignant and nostalgic about the
accumulated leavings of dead lives: the old wedding photographs and
remnants of tea services, the sentimental Victorian prints, the formal
photographs from the 19205 of earnest children posed against obviously
spurious backgrounds and gazing into the lens with concentrated
innocence.  I remember a similar photograph taken when I was eleven and
had just started at the Cambridge High School: my mother standing
behind a synthetic wall (she was always sensitive about her size),
myself with hair unnaturally tidy, held back with a slide, wearing my
pleated gym tunic, Monica and Edward seated.

Among a pile of objects we both found something to buy: Francoise a
Doulton Victorian toothbrush-holder large enough to make an attractive
flower vase, and a very pretty glass vase, also nineteenth-century, and
myself two turn-of-the-century blue specimen vases, which I bought as a
present for Clare.

I was the first up this morning and heard the news of the death of the
Princess of Wales as soon as I turned on the radio for the 7 o'clock
news.

My reaction, which must have been shared by millions, was disbelief, as
if the natural order had somehow been reversed.  Death has power over
lesser mortals but not this icon.  It took a few seconds of listening
to the newscaster's sombre voice to realize that this wasn't a
carefully contrived publicity stunt; this was reality, horrible,
brutal, ugly and final.

The four of us went to St.  Edmund's Church for the 10 o'clock service
and it seemed appropriate to take part in the order, the dignity and
the well-known prayers of the 1662 Mattins.  The priest was at another
of his group churches and the service was taken by a layman wearing
doctor's robes.  He preached a short but remarkable sermon which could
not have been bettered: Christian, scholarly and sensitive.

After lunch at the Swan, Francoise and I spent most of the afternoon
and evening watching the BBC tribute.  It is never easy for public fig
August 1997 57

ures to react appropriately at short notice to such a tragedy.
Well-worn adjectives begin to sound like a mantra and the reiterated
tributes seem fulsome and platitudinous.  I thought that the Prime
Minister was impressive, the Archbishop of Canterbury inadequate.  The
most moving tributes came from ordinary people whom Princess Diana had
met, sometimes briefly, who spoke of her warmth and her loving concern
and who obviously felt that they had had a personal relationship with
her.

This, I imagine, would have pleased her most.

The process of beatification was well under way by the end of the day
and will no doubt continue.  There was something so horribly
appropriate about the manner of her death, and I have the feeling that
we were all involved in a Greek tragedy with the whole country as the
Chorus.

Beautiful, wilful, complicated, destructive and doomed, it is hard to
believe that she could have found happiness.  Her comfort was always in
the love of strangers and, if she most wanted that love to be intense,
personal and universal, today, at least, she would be satisfied.

September

TUESDAY, 2ND SEPTEMBER

Frances Fyfield arrived at n o'clock for our last session in connection
with a Times interview with me.  In the course of general discussion
about writing we spoke about copy-editing.  Frances said that she
doubted whether any novel could be absolutely accurate in every detail
and that the last person to spot a mistake was usually the author, who
was too involved with plot and characters to notice small
inconsistencies or typing errors.  I know that I am occasionally a
careless writer in this respect and, as my books are long and complex,
they do need very careful copy-editing; this they certainly receive.
Apart from the Faber copy editor who is usually excellent, the proofs
are read by Peter and Jane.

Peter is meticulous about language, deleting, for example, the
superfluous adjective in the phrase "wide panorama," and methodically
noting the number of duplicated words.

Ruth Rendell held her publicity party for her new book Road Rage at the
Groucho, but I was unable to be there as I had undertaken some months
ago to speak at the University Women's Club.  I managed to reach Ruth
at her London house both to explain and to congratulate her on the
reviews for Road Rage.  Ruth, who, with her husband Don, is a
long-standing friend, is a remarkable and prolific writer, regularly
producing novels which explore with power and high imagination the
darker corners of the human psyche.  She used to find the conventions
of the detective story too restrictive and some critics would agree
that her best novels are those written under the pseudonym Barbara
Vine.  But she is now beginning to use the Wexford saga as an
opportunity to deal with social affairs about which she feels concern.
Neither Ruth nor I are didactic writers and I never set out to point a
moral or to deal specifically with a social problem.  But if a novel is
set in the modern world, social and political concerns necessarily
intrude.  In the first book in which my woman detec

<;8

September 1997 59

tive Kate Miskin appears, A Taste for Death, I didn't set out to
explore the problems of an intelligent, ambitious and underprivileged
young woman fighting her way to seniority and success in the machismo
world of the police, but the book would not have been realistic if
these problems hadn't been dealt with.  Because the detective story is
usually set unambiguously in its own time and place, it often gives a
clearer idea of contemporary life than does more prestigious
literature.  If we want to know what it was like to work in a City
advertising office in the early 19305, there is no better book than
Dorothy L. Sayers's Murder Must Advertise.

The dinner at the University Women's Club was, I think, successful and
it is always a pleasure to be in this attractive, comfortable and well
managed club with its ambience of unpretentious feminine
tranquillity.

But the evening left me exhausted because of the high level of noise at
dinner.  I realize now that I really cannot tolerate being battered by
a cacophony of shouting voices, but it is difficult to know what to do
about it.  Peter, who is a neuroscientist, has explained that in youth
the human brain has the facility to distinguish between the sounds it
wishes to receive and others, thus effectively shutting out loud
background noise, but that this ability decreases with age.  But then,
I am becoming intolerant of almost all loud noises and, in particular,
of pop music.  It blares out in shops, assaults my ears in taxis, is
piped into offices and seeps from the earphones of fellow passengers in
trains and on the Underground.  And now we have the intrusive nuisance
of the ubiquitous mobile phone to disturb the peace of railway
journeys.  Perhaps the train companies should consider introducing
quiet compartments as well as those for nonsmokers.

WEDNESDAY, 3RD SEPTEMBER

Derek Parker, who edits the journal of the Society of Authors, came for
a brief interview to gather material for an article in the journal
following my appointment as President of the Society.  Polly-Hodge, as
always with male visitors, was outrageously flirtatious and
affectionate, laying her head on his knee and effectively covering his
trousers with white hairs.

Happily he is a cat-lover and didn't mind.

We talked about the Society and whether there would be an ad van

tage in applying for affiliation with the Trades Union Council.  On the
whole I have never been in favour, but certainly wouldn't strongly
dissent if a majority of members want affiliation.  I don't think there
is much evidence that they do.  We talked about support for the public
library system and he asked my views on whether a small charge should
be made for each borrowing.  My strong dislike of imposing a charge
arises from my early experience when I depended on the Cambridge Public
Library for virtually all my reading.  The library was education,
meeting-place, refuge and treasure trove, although it was poorly
equipped and ill housed compared with the large public libraries of
today.

There, too, in the reading room I would read the newspapers.  It was
there one Saturday morning in 1936 that I first read the news of the
uncrowned King Edward VIII's infatuation for a divorced American woman,
Mrs.  Simpson, for whom apparently he was prepared to give up the
throne.  It seems incredible in these days of media power and
intrusiveness that a secret of such importance could be kept from the
British public so effectively and for so long.  It was achieved because
a small group of powerful men, politicians, courtiers and newspaper
magnates could exercise a far more effective censorship than almost
anything possible today.

The public library was essential to my generation because we couldn't
afford books.  I pointed out to Derek that it is now possible to buy a
classic in paperback for under a pound.  The range of paperback fiction
is enormous and the huge expenditure on the Lottery doesn't suggest
that borrowers would find it an imposition to pay a small charge,
perhaps when borrowing new hardback books.  But the administrative cost
might outweigh the advantage, and I still retain that vestigial dislike
of charging for public library borrowing.

Afterwards I shopped in Kensington High Street.  The flower stall
outside St.  Mary Abbot's Church had set up a trestle table with a huge
pile of tissue paper and there was a continuous sale of flowers to
people on their way to Kensington Palace.  This extraordinary festival
of mourning is like an infection.  It is oppressive and poignant, but
also alien and disturbing.  I have a feeling, uncomfortable and
irrational, that something has been released into the atmosphere and it
isn't benign.  The real woman has become smothered by acres of plastic
and decaying flowers.

The crowd was extraordinary.  The women--and the great majority were
women, many with prams or toddlers--walked, eyes fixed with a kind of
desperate intensity as if afraid they would be late or were on their
way to

September 1997 61

the first day of a sale.  They didn't communicate or even look at each
other.  One could almost believe that an official edict had gone out
that flowers must be laid within three days on pain of condign
punishment.

There is a growing and disturbing animus against the Royal Family whose
reticence is clearly neither understood nor sympathized with.  I shall
feel relieved when Saturday is over.

FRIDAY, 5TH SEPTEMBER

Yesterday evening Dick Francis held his publication party for his new
book, 10 Lb.  Penalty.  Dick is a remarkable writer.  He produces a
book a year, all of which immediately appear on the bestseller list,
usually at number one.  He begins writing in January, delivers the
manuscript by the end of May, and the book is published in August.
Obviously this regularity of output and the disciplined setting aside
of five months each year for writing suits him.  I don't think I could
possibly do it and I admire both his inventiveness and his stamina. For
me a novel takes from nine months to a year to plot and plan, and even
longer to write.  I sometimes envy those writers who produce their best
work when under the pressure of time.  They make my own leisurely
method seem selfindulgent.

Dick's annual novel is always launched at the Ritz and the usual
mixture of media people, publishers and crime writers was present. John
and Norma Major were guests, both looking extremely well and cheerful.
As John has said, "There is life outside Number Ten."  I suspect it is
a life Norma prefers.  They won't be able to be at my publication party
on 6th October as this is the first day of the Conservative Party
Conference and John will attend before beginning a lecture tour in the
United States.

The Royal Family seem to be giving way to pressure from the
people--which of course means pressure from the tabloids--to show their
grief more publicly.  It seems outrageous that the bereaved should be
expected to come down to London publicly to collude in what is
increasingly seen as a self-indulgent, almost neurotic display of
emotionalism.

But it would have been wise if the Queen had spoken briefly on radio
and television to say that it was right that she should be with her
grandchildren at this time, but that her thoughts and prayers were
with

all who were grieving, and if the Duke of York and Prince Edward had
returned to London at once, perhaps to meet some of those waiting to
pay tribute.

Today there was a curious atmosphere in London composed of unease,
expectation and grief.  The carpets of flowers are growing before
Kensington Palace, St.  James's and Buckingham Palace, and people are
already settling down to spend the night on the funeral route.  There
was a spell of heavy rain in the afternoon, but a clear night.

In the evening I had supper with Harriet Harvey-Wood, now retired as
Director of the Literature Department of the British Council, and her
mother.  Harriet had shopped in Kensington High Street and said that it
was virtually impossible to get out of the Tube trains because of the
pressure of people on the Underground platform--all carrying flowers.
Mrs.

Harvey-Wood, now over ninety, found the public emotionalism
particularly distressing.  Her generation, which has survived two world
wars, is stoical in grief and mourns in private.  And for what exactly
are people mourning?  I suspect for themselves.

SATURDAY, 6TH SEPTEMBER

I spent most of today until evening watching the funeral on television.
It was an extraordinary, indeed unique, event.  Apart from a brief
preliminary wailing when the gun-carriage first appeared, the crowd was
very quiet and the half-feared demonstrations of anger never occurred.
For me the most poignant moment was when the young princes, with their
father, Prince Philip and Earl Spencer, took their places behind the
coffin at St.  James's Palace.  The fact that the boys could manage
this walk before thousands of onlookers was a tribute to their
fortitude and selfcontrol--qualities which are not much in fashion.

I was glad that it was so sunny.  London--the parks, the trees, the
buildings--looked very beautiful.  It was extraordinary that the whole
funeral could be so well organized and so perfectly carried out in just
a week.  The Abbey service was a successful compromise.  I thought that
I would find the Elton John song obtrusive but it seemed appropriate;

this, after all, was the world in which the Princess was most at
home.

There was applause both outside and inside the Abbey for Earl
Spencer,

September 1997 63

but I thought his attack on the Royal Family was unnecessary and
misguided;

the wrong words at the wrong time in the wrong place.  I wonder if
those sad, mascara-laden eyes will droop in reproach for ever over the
House of Windsor, or whether this media-fuelled emotion will burn
itself out as quickly as it has arisen.

TUESDAY, 9TH SEPTEMBER

The American Ambassador, Admiral Crowe, and his wife held one of their
goodbye parties at the Residence in Regent's Park.  There was room in
the marquee even for the large number of guests, but as the evening was
fine I strolled into the garden.  Unusually for a party at Winfield
House, I saw few people I knew.  The Ambassador gave a short and
amusing speech and I particularly liked one story.  He said this was
his second retirement.  The morning after he left the Navy he dashed
out of his house and settled himself comfortably with his newspaper in
the back of his car.  A few minutes later his wife came out to point
out gently that, if he wanted the car to go anywhere, he would have to
sit in the front and drive!  He can't be the only one to tell this
story.

The Residency is now to be closed for about two years for necessary
repairs, including the removal of asbestos.  I shall miss the parties
there which, under different ambassadors, I have known always to have a
welcoming spontaneity and informality even on more formal occasions.

WEDNESDAY, 10TH SEPTEMBER

To the National Portrait Gallery, one of my favourite London galleries,
for the first viewing of a portrait of John Major by John Wonnacott and
one of Tony Benn by Humphrey Ocean, both commissioned by the Trustees.
The two portraits are very different.

The John Major, considerably larger, shows him sitting in the white
room at Number Ten with Norma on a window seat and a view through the
open door into the adjoining green room.  I like portraits in a
domestic setting, particularly with an interesting vista, but I found the
perspective somewhat disturbing.  The carpet seems to be hung rather
than laid, and John's hand and foot look out of proportion.  No doubt
all this is intended and the picture certainly has a dramatic impact.
In front of John is a white glistening object resembling crumpled foil,
but which I was told is a piece of modern silver from his collection. I
know about his fondness for silver; he showed me with obvious pleasure
some pieces from the dinner service when I dined at Number Ten.  But I
am not sure that the piece included in the portrait is a successful
addition.  Tony Benn's portrait is much smaller, an amorphous
egg-shaped visage but one which did convey something of the sitter's
essential character.

Portrait painting seems to be in a state of flux.  Perhaps because of
the development of photography and its power both to fix and interpret
personality with powerful immediacy, artists seem to have lost
confidence in representational painting.  Few do it well and others, in
their desperate search for new ways of looking at life, have sacrificed
a recognizable likeness to experimental technique.  But a photographic
image, however brilliant, can never challenge the best of painting. For
me, a painting provides a more intense, more personal and more enduring
insight into human personality.  A photograph, however brilliant, says
all it has to say at once.  To return to it is only to reinforce that
first immediate response.

I can return to a painted portrait again and again, learning more each
time about the artist as well as the sitter.

Tony Benn's son came up to me while I was looking at my own portrait by
Michael Taylor, and wanted to talk about my use of St.  Peter-on
the-Wall at Bradwell in Original Sin.  We spoke about setting in the
crime novel and I told him that I had wanted to erect a house for one
of my characters on a desolate stretch of East Anglian coast and
thought Bradwell would suit my purposes admirably.  He took a
photograph of me in front of my portrait.  I read that there is an
audio cassette about the portrait giving Michael Taylor's views as
artist on me as sitter. I didn't buy it, although I was tempted to hear
Michael's views.

When the Trustees of the National Portrait Gallery decided that they
wanted to commission a portrait of me, I was invited to meet the
Director, Dr.  Charles Saumarez Smith, and the keeper of the twentieth
century collection, to discuss which artist should be chosen.  I was
asked whether I would prefer a well-known, well-established figure or a
brilliant up-and-coming painter, although I don't think the choice was
pre September 1997 65

sen ted in precisely those terms.  I was shown postcards of the work of
Michael Taylor and I liked the strength and originality of his
compositions and the authority with which he used colour.

He came to my house for the sittings, himself chose the room and the
pose, and when I showed him the dress I had in mind, liked it, although
in the portrait it certainly appears more shapeless than it does when I
am wearing it.  I enjoyed the thirteen sittings and liked Michael very
much.

There was no problem in sitting still--there never is for me--but I
wanted to use the time and silence to think about my new novel and
every time I retreated into that imaginary world, Michael would say,
"You're not looking at me."  He worked with great intensity, seeming to
widen and shoot out his eyes as he painted and using copious amounts of
toilet paper from a roll to clean his brushes.

We spoke hardly at all during the sittings.  There is much I would like
to have asked him.  What did he think of the commercial art world today
and of such iconoclastic artists as Damien Hirst?  How far did private
patrons influence what people feel is important and are prepared to pay
for?  How difficult was it for a newcomer to find a gallery willing to
take him on?  Did galleries have too much influence?  Did artists feel
themselves under pressure to produce quickly or in a certain style? How
easy was it to make a living?  Were art colleges good or bad for an
aspiring artist?  But I totally sympathized with Michael's wish not to
chat.  He was as much in his private world while painting as I am in
mine while writing, and at those times interruptions are intolerable.

I did ask him during a break if he was intending to make me look
sinister or mysterious, to which he replied, "I have enough problems
putting down what I see without trying to see something else."  He has
put down precisely what he saw: an elderly, much-lined woman with, I
suppose, a certain authority.  It is the painting of a seventy-five
year-old by someone still young, and is literally wart and all.  It is
a powerful painting which I much admire and, like all powerful
paintings, provokes controversy.  Some of my friends complain that it
verges on caricature, but no one says it isn't like me.

THURSDAY, 11TH SEPTEMBER

The children's writer and artist Shirley Hughes is seventy, and four of
her publishers joined to give her a party held at the Royal College of
Art.

Shirley and her husband John are two friends whom I never meet without
a lifting of the heart, and see only too rarely.  She has had a
profound influence on writing for children, particularly young
children, through her stories and the vigour of her superb
illustrations.  Here are real parents, real children, never
sentimentalized but drawn with tenderness, humour and humanity.  The
party was crowded, but not unpleasantly so because of the number of
rooms and the fact that the windows could be opened to a generally warm
night.  There were speeches by Margaret Meek, the educationalist who,
like me, occasionally attends All Saints, Margaret Street, by one of
Shirley's editors, by Posy Simmons, and by Shirley herself.  She blew
out seventy candles to general acclamation, after which I left.

There were flowers, teddy bears, other toys, balloons and messages tied
to the railings of Kensington Gardens and Hyde Park, although the heaps
of dead flowers inside the railings show that the work of clearing has
begun.

SUNDAY, I4TH SEPTEMBER

To Southwold on Friday with an Oxford friend, the novelist Ann
Pilling.

She didn't have the car so came up very early by bus and we took a taxi
to Liverpool Street.  It was the first time Ann had seen the rebuilt
station, which I think architecturally one of the most successful in
London.  I love the meticulous brickwork and the way in which the great
iron arches have been retained and repaired.  I can remember the
Liverpool Street of my childhood: smoke-filled, mysterious, exciting.
To me it represented London and all that word implied of romance,
history, pleasure, and a whiff of danger.  I came to London very rarely
when a schoolgirl, but was once taken by my father to a Promenade
Concert at

September 1997 67

the old Queen's Hall outside the BBC.  I remember Sir Henry Wood
turning, baton in hand, to scowl at us as if we were a potentially
unruly mob.  The scowl seemed to be directed personally at me, as if he
had detected that, musically, I was unqualified to be there.  The music
meant little, but I can remember walking down to Oxford Street, by then
deserted, and being told by my father that this was the longest street
in the world.  He was given to confident assertions, most of which I
believed.

It has been a good weekend, the beautiful, delicately hued skies and
the sea changing from grey-green to pale milky blue.  We had much talk,
mostly personal on Ann's side, and we also discussed how far the
novelist's strong emotions should influence the process of writing.  I
made the point that a novel can't be just a raw slice of personal
experience, however tragic or engulfing.  Obviously we must use our own
lives as material --what else do we have?--but a novelist must be able
to stand aside from this experience, view it with detachment, however
painful, and fashion it into a satisfying shape.  It is this ability to
detach oneself from experience and at the same time portray it with
honesty and controlled emotion which makes a novelist.  Perhaps it is
also this ability to assume the role of privileged spectator, the cold
searching gaze, which caused Graham Greene to write that every writer
has a splinter of ice in the heart.  Even as a child I had a sense that
I was two people; the one who experienced the trauma, the pain, the
happiness, and the other who stood aside and watched with a
disinterested ironic eye.  But I know that there are two experiences
too overwhelming for such detachment.  One would be the death of a
child; the second, overwhelming physical agony.

Pain, our response to it, our fear of it, makes the whole world kin.
Perhaps because no detachment is possible from intense physical agony.
I can think of no novel which has described it adequately.  The more
intense, the higher, more refined and exquisite the physical sensation,
whether of agony or ecstasy, the less power have words to describe
it.

TUESDAY, l6TH SEPTEMBER

I went this evening to the Royal Society at Carlton Terrace for the
Annual General Meeting of the Society of Authors.  It was the last

appearance as chairman of Simon Brett, who presented the nzth Annual
Report and, as expected, made an entertaining and lively speech.  He
welcomed his successor, Clare Francis, and also reported that I had
been elected by the Council to succeed Sir Victor Pritchett as
President of the Society.  This has given me immense pleasure.  When
Mark Le Fanu, Secretary of the Society, wrote to tell me about it I
replied that I knew I was following a president of great distinction
both as a writer and as a man, and hoped to be worthy of the trust the
Society was placing in me.  The words were conventional but the emotion
was sincere.

After the AGM there was a discussion under the title "For how much
would you sell your soul?"  with a panel including Robert McCrum,
formerly of Faber and Faber.  The discussion concentrated less on money
than on the problems raised by indecency and pornography.  The general
view was that all censorship was wrong, indeed indefensible, but I made
the point that there were surely some matters--the depiction on video
of the sexual exploitation of young children, for example--which no
civilized country ought to tolerate.  There are two easy options for
any society:

total prohibition as in a totalitarian state, or total licence.  Both
avoid the ardours of decision.  Both have the attraction of certainty.
The difficult option is to decide where the line should be drawn and
this, surely, is the responsibility of any civilized and democratic
country.

One of the questioners suggested, although she did not positively
state, that I have sold my soul over television since she had seen one
of the less successful adaptations.  I pointed out that television is a
visual medium and that one can't expect ever to be totally satisfied
with an adaptation.  When people say to me, "Do you like what
television has done with your book?," I reply that the director has
done nothing to my book, since he has no power to alter a single comma.
But it is true that television is increasingly trivial.  I have no
doubt of the current priorities as far as television is concerned;
first in importance is the scheduling, second the star, third the
director, fourth--and a long way behind--the drawing power of the
writer's name and, last of all, the book.  But to turn down the offer
of a television series is not a simple decision.  The series can
dramatically affect paperback sales, which gives the publisher as well
as the author a strong interest, and the series provides jobs for
actors and adapters.

It is easy for me to say, "I am rich enough now to do without
television and will keep my art undefiled," but I am not sure how far
this high-mindedness is justified.  I am, however, only too aware
what

September 1997 69

changes may be made to the plot of A Certain Justice in order to ensure
that the star has an appropriate number of appearances on screen.  The
story, too, will have to be compressed if a long and complex novel is
to be televised in only three episodes.  More I fear will be lost than
parts of the plot.

SUNDAY, 21ST SEPTEMBER

I arrived home from Heathrow after 9:30 p.m. having spent the weekend
in Oslo helping my Norwegian publisher, Aschehoug, celebrate their
i25th anniversary.  A century and a quarter is apparently a special
commemoration in Norway and the event was impressive.  It must also
have been extremely expensive.

There was a dinner on the Friday night at the Drammensveren Hotel, and
on Saturday there was open house at the firm's recently extended
offices with a buffet lunch and plenty of drink, and in the evening a
concert with 1,500 invited guests.  The concert was a celebration in
words and music of Aschehoug's 125 years in publishing, and I enjoyed
the Norwegian songs and the special mini-opera composed for the
occasion, although I could understand none of the rest of the
programme, except the words "Sherlock Holmes" and "Dr.  Watson" during
the episode celebrating the publication of the Conan Doyle stories.

On the Sunday morning there was a little free time and my escort Ivor
(I never registered his surname) took me to see Amundsen's ship, the
Fram.  It is incredible to think that the crew of thirteen were held in
the ice together for three years, apparently without anyone going
berserk or murdering one of his colleagues.  A ship marooned in ice
could be a dramatic setting for a detective story, a closed circle of
people exposed to the inevitable emotional traumas of enforced
intimacy, and a limited number of suspects.  This last is important if
each suspect is to be given equal space and attention, each motive made
credible.

Providing a believable motive for murder is one of the greatest
difficulties facing the modern crime writer.  In the 19305 readers
could apparently believe that A had murdered B because B knew something
highly discreditable about A's sex life which he was threatening to
reveal.  Today, so far from fearing disclosure, people receive good
money for writing

about the more lurid aspects of their sex lives in the Sunday
newspapers.

Politicians who are guilty of flagrant infidelities are no longer
propelled into the wilderness of ignoble obscurity, but into the lush
pastures of media fame and fortune.  Blackmail can still provide a
credible motive but our priorities for disgust have changed; nowadays
it would not be a sexual misdemeanour but racism or child abuse which
would invite disaster.

Money, the need of it, the lack of it, particularly if the amount is
large, is always a credible motive, as is that deep-seated hatred which
can render an enemy's very existence insupportable.  In one of my early
novels an experienced sergeant is reported to have said to the young
probationer Adam Dalgliesh that the letter "I" covers all motives for
murder:

love, lust, loathing and lucre.  He adds, "They'll tell you, my boy,
that the most dangerous emotion in the world is hate.  Don't you
believe it.  The most dangerous emotion is love."  As a writer I find
that the most credible motive and, perhaps, the one for which the
reader can feel some sympathy, is the murderer's wish to advantage,
protect or avenge someone he or she greatly loves.  But should the
reader feel sympathy for the murderer?

Perhaps sympathy is too strong a word; but I think there should be
empathy and understanding.  In the words of Ivy Compton Burnett

"I believe it would go ill with many of us if we were faced with a
strong temptation, and I suspect that with some of us it does go
ill."

On board the Fram there was a piano and a gramophone for entertainment,
and their scientific expeditions by sledge would have added a change of
scene and the relief of physical activity.  Even so, the whole
enterprise was a triumph of courage, will and scientific passion over
danger and discomfort.  What I wanted to know and didn't discover was
how they kept healthy, particularly how they got their vitamins.  They
obviously shot and ate bears and other wildlife, but they couldn't have
had vegetables or fresh fruit.

Ivor was an interesting guide.  We talked about his country's
educational system, the health service, and social and economic
problems which are remarkably similar to ours.  We also spoke about
language and he said one thing which I found interesting, that much
German thoroughness comes from the need to think every sentence through
to its concluding verb before speaking it, whereas in English and
Norwegian, words can be strung together in an occasionally artless
concatenation.

We then went back to the hotel to collect Marilyn French, who wanted to
see the Anselm Kiefer pictures at the Astrup Fearnley Museum for Modern
Art.  I was glad we went.  I was impressed and

September 1997 71

moved by the Kiefers, but the Francis Bacons--violent slabs of meaty
flesh--are not pictures I could live with without some risk to mental
health.  There were three good nudes by Lucian Freud.  He paints what
he sees with total honesty if little humanity.  I should like to own a
Freud.

Before coming back on Sunday there was a reading in the Great Hall of
the University by two Scandinavian writers, and by Marilyn French,
Salman Rushdie and myself.  Salman and I had been booked on the same
plane at Heathrow and we both went through the VIP channels on arrival,
although he was whisked off in a police car with escort and I was found
a taxi.  I suppose I might have been slightly nervous in flight had I
realized that he was a fellow passenger.  William Nygaard, my Norwegian
publisher, was shot and was lucky to escape being killed when he
decided to publish The Satanic Verses.  He wore a bullet-proof coat
during most of the weekend, but I can't say I felt that any of us were
particularly at risk.

Salman read from Midnight's Children exceptionally well, then was
hurried away to catch an early plane home.  I felt slightly ashamed of
my relief that I was booked to travel later.

It was a joy to have Marlene Mitev at the door to welcome me back.

She has spent the weekend here looking after Polly-Hodge.  When she is
here, I realize how much I have missed being greeted at the end of a
trip.

We shared a room together when we were both working at the Home Office,
first in the Whitehall building and then at Queen Anne's Gate.

To share an office is to spend more time in one another's company-about
eight hours a day--than most people spend with their families.  It can
also mean sharing more experiences, good and bad.  Marlene is
intelligent, amusing, kind and, being a Yorkshirewoman, given to
speaking plain common sense.  We became, and remain, close friends.

It occurs to me that I have mentioned but not described PollyHodge.

I have shared this house, and to an extent my life, for the past ten
years with a white long-haired female cat.  Previously I had two
Burmese: Cuthbert, plumply indolent and affectionate; Pansy,
flirtatious and overactive.  Both were stolen.  I never heard anything
of Pansy again, but the RSPCA telephoned to say that Cuthbert had been
found dead in the Underground but without his collar.  I don't know how
they traced him to me.  I suppose he somehow managed to evade his
captors and made a dash for the stairs at Holland Park.

After this I decided not to have another cat.  I wasn't entirely
uninfluenced by the difficulty of arranging for an animal to be fed
while I am away.  But then this white cat began to appear in the
garden, sleeping on

one of the chairs under the glass roof of the loggia.  She was
excessively nervous and would glide from the chair and disappear at
great speed as soon as I opened the kitchen door to feed the birds. But
she was frequently in the garden getting--at least to my eyes--thinner
and slightly bedraggled.  Eventually I could not resist putting out a
saucer of Whiskas.  When I went down for my early morning tea the next
day she was curled up on the kitchen wicker chair and showed every
intention of remaining there.

From that morning she moved in permanently.  Knowing this was
inevitable I attempted to lay down the conditions under which we would
live together.  (I dislike anthropomorphizing, but when a cat sits in
her Ancient Egyptian pose--head erect, paws together, tail curled, eyes
straight ahead--it is difficult to believe that my carefully reasoned
arguments are not being understood.) I said that the kitchen would be
her territory.  An old fur coat would be placed on the chair for her
greater comfort.  A cat-flap, as she had already discovered, would give
access to the garden and the mat by the door was suitably tough for
scratching.

Receiving this information, Hodge (as I immediately called her) was
mentally laying down the conditions under which she would condescend to
live with me.  She did not long remain in the kitchen.  The corner at
the top of the basement stairs is particularly warm since the hot water
pipe runs down that wall.  There seemed no good reason why she should
not be allowed to sleep on the top step.  Then it became apparent that
she enjoyed watching television with me, provided no war film was being
shown when she would immediately leap from my lap and make for the door
while keeping close to the wall.  So the sitting-room became available
to her during the evenings.  After that it was only a flight of stairs
to my bed where, although she is never allowed to sleep at night, she
often finds it convenient to spend the day.  Now, of course, there is
no corner of the house which is free from white hairs.

It was my then neighbour, the late Lady Moynihan, more knowledgeable
than I about people in the neighbourhood, who discovered where Hodge
had come from.  This coincided with a photograph of me with the cat
published in a national newspaper.  A letter immediately followed from
her previous owners.  Apparently Hodge--whose name, I learned, was
Polly--had previously lived with the family in Holland Park.  When they
moved, however, they acquired two more cats and Polly obstinately
refused to share her home.  It was impossible to keep her in and the
vet, when consulted, said that there was nothing they

September 1997 73

could do to prevent her leaving.  Polly-Hodge, cat-like, was prepared
to live wild in her old haunts until an acceptable home presented
itself, rather than share comfortable accommodation with two
interlopers.  Her previous owners--although the word owners is
inappropriate in relation to cats--were happy for me to keep her and
Polly-Hodge, now renamed, has remained.  Since she never answered to
the previous name, the addition of Polly has made no difference.  She
doesn't have to earn food or houseroom by any service, by tricks of
behaviour or by an inordinate display of affection.  It is enough that
I take daily pleasure in the infinite variety of attitudes, all
graceful, in which she composes herself for sleep, the elegant hieratic
stillness with which she contemplates life with those inscrutable amber
eyes.  It is in this attitude that she waits beside her bowl for food.
When hungry she never wreathes herself round my legs but sits in a
parody of patience unrewarded.  Returning to her half-empty bowl she
won't deign to eat until I have bent down to scrape the food into the
middle.  The impression given is that she is awaiting permission to
begin eating; more likely she prefers not to touch the edge of the bowl
with her whiskers or requires me to perform this small act of
servitude.

I have no doubt that she would have found a more desirable home on the
Avenue had one presented itself, but nevertheless, irrationally, I feel
a sense of pride that she chose me.  She is embarrassingly affectionate
to all callers, particularly those who dislike cats, loves being
photographed-except when she is wanted, when she declines to
cooperate--is obstinate, timid and entirely beautiful.  I took her to
the vet when she first moved in and he thought she was about five years
old, so she is now over fifteen and, alas, has that illness common in
elderly cats.  The symptoms are constant hunger and thirst but, despite
huge intake, the cat gets inexorably thinner.  But Polly-Hodge still
purrs, still grooms herself fastidiously and obviously still enjoys
life.  When the moment comes when that life is no longer agreeable and
it is apparent that she is suffering it will be painlessly ended.  We
are often more merciful to our animals than we are to each other.
Meanwhile we grow old together, she the more gracefully.

WEDNESDAY, 24TH SEPTEMBER

A young photographer, Andy Slack, came to take a portrait photograph
for The Times to accompany Frances Fyfield's interview.  He brought a
young woman assistant and I provided tea and cakes before and after the
photograph, which was happily stress-free once the young man realized
that I strongly dislike talking about my work when being
photographed.

Photographers, particularly the young ones, seem to feel they should
take an interest in an author's craft, and actually imagine that we are
gratified to answer the overfamiliar questions about working methods,
where we get our inspiration, how long it takes to complete a book,
etc.

At least this one didn't come accompanied by a skull and a dagger and
expect me to peer round the edges of doors looking malevolent.
Photographers, new to me and setting out to produce images of a dark,
sinister and probably emaciated witch-like woman, are disconcerted to
find themselves facing a plump, generally benign grandmother.  They do
their best to fulfill the picture editor's expectations ("You don't
happen to have a skull we could use, I suppose?").  Most resign
themselves to failure.  But I thought the results, judging by the
contact prints, were good and Andy was an unfussy photographer.  Some
of the best photographs I have had taken have been by Jane Bown with no
assistant and only a handheld camera.

I realize that a diary should be written up daily even if the day is
without particular events and there seems little of note worth
recording.  No day is really without interest, being filled with
thoughts, memories, plans, moments of particular hope and occasional
moments of depression.

Every day is lived in the present, but also vicariously in the past and
one can write a novel of 100,000 words covering just one hour of a
human life.  But it seems too egotistical to spend the last hours of
every day contemplating the minutiae of unrecoverable moments.  I say
my prayers and am grateful for the comfort of bed.

September 1997 75

THURSDAY, 25TH SEPTEMBER

This evening the Mayor of Kensington, Mr.  Edward Hess, gave an
enjoyable dinner at the Town Hall.  At thirty-five he is the youngest
mayor the Royal Borough has ever had, and I imagine probably younger
than any previous mayor in any borough.  He is a lawyer and a number of
barristers from his chambers were there, including Gavyn Arthur, who
has so generously helped with the research for A Certain Justice. Gavyn
had his copy with him and passed it to Mr.  Hess, who obligingly held
it aloft at the end of his brief speech and exhorted the company to buy
it.

SUNDAY, 28TH SEPTEMBER

This weekend I attended a Conversazione on Culture and Society under
the heading "The Future of the Past" held at Lincoln College, Oxford.

The event was interesting and at times enthralling, bringing together
more than eighty representatives of Church, finance, the arts, academia
and journalism in a three-day discussion of our attitudes towards the
past and our cultural perceptions of history and heritage as we have
inherited them through literature, art and buildings.  My own lecture,
on the importance of language and the written word, given this
afternoon, was generously received, although I feel that I was boxing
somewhat above my weight (always the surest way to ensure a swift
knockout), and most of what I said about literature, language and the
importance of encouraging children to read has been said before both by
me and by others better qualified to participate.  I emphasized that
preserving the language doesn't mean resisting change.  English has
from the beginning been a hybrid; brought to Britain by the Angles,
Saxons and Jutes, influenced by Latin and Greek, enriched by the Danes
and French-speaking Normans, given strength and beauty by Tyndale's
translation of the Bible and Cranmer's Book of Common Prayer.  To
preserve a language is not to guard it jealously against any alien
influence but, in the words of Chambers Dictionary, "to keep safe from
harm or loss; to keep alive; to

keep sound; to guard against decay."  A living language responds to the
aspirations and needs of each generation but the changes should enrich,
not impoverish.  We debase our language if, while inventing new words
to meet new techniques, we lose that nice precision of definition in
vocabulary and construction which makes English an exact as well as a
versatile language.

This was the first Conversazione I have attended and it had its own
form and procedures, being neither conference nor colloquium.  At
dinner people at each table conferred and then asked a question of any
of the speakers.  They were designed, I think, to entertain, challenge
or amuse rather than seriously to elicit information.  I was asked for
Dalgliesh's views on structural ism--or was it post-structural ism  I
replied that he had given it careful thought for a number of evenings
and had come to the conclusion that it was nonsense.  The young
chaplain sitting next to me murmured, "In vain they lay snares at her
feet."  I suppose that, if I'd been to university, I might have
understood these more complex literary theories.  Whether they would
have added to my enjoyment of reading or made me a better writer is
open to question.  The Conversazione was an enjoyable and welcome
experience and I was reminded of the conversation between Mr.  Elliot
and his cousin Anne Elliot in Persuasion:

"My idea of good company, Mr.  Elliot, is the company of clever,
well-informed people, who have a great deal of conversation; that is
what I call good company."

"You are mistaken," he said gently.

"That is not good company, that is the best."

TUESDAY, 3OTH SEPTEMBER

Yesterday was one of those catching-up days in which resolutions to
tackle the "pending" file, sort out my summer dresses and put them
away, and fit in a hair appointment had all been dissipated in a kind
of aimless activity.  I did manage to complete, and Joyce faxed to the
Sunday

September 1997 77

Times, my review of the Oxford Dictionary of Literary Quotations edited
by Peter Kemp.

To the making of dictionaries there is no end, particularly under the
aegis of the Oxford University Press, and I for one make no
complaint.

Books of quotations, in particular, afford me one of the most
undemanding but satisfying forms of reading pleasure.  Oxford
University Press have been wise in their choice of editor, Peter
bringing to his task a wide knowledge and appreciation of literature
both old and contemporary.

I can think of a number of quotations which I should like to have seen
included, and no doubt Peter will be inundated with suggestions from
friends.  All the more reason for a supplement or for an enlarged
paperback edition.  One quotation I would most like to see in any
revised edition are the words of Henry James, writing of Anthony
Trollope, "We trust to novels to maintain us in the practice of great
indignations and great generosities."  It is an elevated ideal of
fiction but, thinking it over, I am not sure that it is any longer
true.  Dickens could write a novel which would move his readers to pity
or outrage and act as a spur to action, but surely today it is
television which, sometimes powerfully, sometimes superficially,
examines for us the dilemmas and concerns of our age, reflects our
lives and opens to us the lives of others.  Men and women who in
Victorian England would have read Dickens are now watching Eas tEnders
and Panorama.

In particular the so-called literary novel too often seems removed from
the day-to-day concerns of ordinary people.  The very description
"literary novel" is, for many readers, an indication that the work is
not intended for them.  With some notable exceptions--David Lodge is
one--the worlds of industry and commerce, the very means by which
society gains the wealth which supports our art and literature, are
alien to the modern novelist, perhaps because they are worlds few of us
have experienced.  Have we a responsibility to break free from our
cabined preoccupations, our fascination with history and our literary
exploitation of the evils of the past and address ourselves to more
contemporary themes?  Is there a novelist today who could write--or
would try to write--War and Peace or Trollope's The Way We Live Now
with its brilliant portrayal of the financier Melmotte, the
nineteenth-century Robert Maxwell?

Unless the novel, particularly the so-called literary novel, can
reach

the hearts and minds of ordinary people, reading will increasingly
become a minority interest.  Novelists, too, surely have a duty to be
intelligible if they are to address themselves to a wider audience than
the educated middle class and the literary establishment.  It would be
futile, and indeed silly, to suggest that novelists today can recover
the hierarchical and moral certainties of Victorian England.  Some
writers would argue that we can no longer comfortably write in the
tradition of social realism because we no longer know what we mean by
reality.  I suppose the extremes of literary experimentation are some
novelists' way of explaining the arbitrariness and chaos of human
existence, an attempt to express the inexpressible.  Thomas Hardy wrote
that the secret of fiction lies in the adjustment of things uneven to
things eternal and universal.  But what adjustment can a writer make
if, in a world governed for him by chance and chaos, he is no longer
able to believe in things eternal and universal?

Publication day for A Certain Justice is fast approaching.  Faber sent
a car to take me to the BBC, where I did an on-line interview from
Manchester about the novel, to be used in the afternoon's Kaleidoscope.
Then to Camden Passage to meet Frances Fyfield and collect a dress for
Monday's launch together with a suit and a skirt and jacket.  These
should see me through most of the publicity.

In the evening Gavyn Arthur gave a dinner at the Carlton Club.  I sat
between two lawyers, both interesting, and one involved with mental
health cases, and we had a long talk about psychopathy.  I was glad
that he thought my character Garry Ashe a believable portrait of a
psychopath.

He asked me whether I thought that Ashe would in the end feel any
affection or love for Octavia or would begin to respond to her love for
him, and I said I was sure not.  He agreed.  A psychopath who could
feel love would not be a psychopath.  Some, however, have felt strong
affection for a dog.  It occurs to me that I can't remember ever
reading about a murderer who gave houseroom to, or was fond of, a cat.
The company at dinner was varied, the talk stimulating and interesting,
and I met people I should be glad to meet again--which doesn't always
happen at the age of seventy-seven.  The pity is that life is so busy
that I know that I won't.

October

THURSDAY, 2ND OCTOBER

A journalist from Australia arrived in the afternoon for an interview
in connection with the publication of A Certain Justice.  This is the
beginning of the pre-publicity for my Australian tour next year.

In the evening to St.  Anne's Church in Soho for the launch of Volume 2
of The Letters of Dorothy L. Sayers, edited by Dr.  Barbara Reynolds,
for which I have provided a preface.  I can detect the influence of
Dorothy L. Sayers in my own work together with that of three other
writers: Jane Austen, Graham Greene and Evelyn Waugh.  I suppose few
writers of Sayers's generation have been more controversial.  To her
admirers she is the novelist who did more than any other of her age to
lift the detective story from its status as an inferior puzzle to a
respected craft with claims to be taken seriously as popular
literature.  Her detractors deplore what they see as the snobbery and
elitism (she must be the only crime writer to include in her book a
letter written in French which she does not deign to translate),
focusing their dislike on her aristocratic detective, Lord Peter
Wimsey.  She wrote her detective novels initially to make money and
entertain, and neither is an ignoble aim.  And the books do continue to
entertain, not least as period popular literature giving us a lively
picture of life in the 19205 and 19305, that period which E. M. Forster
described as "a long weekend between two wars."  The fact that, over
forty years after her death, she can still provoke controversy and
stimulate argument is a measure of the resilience of her talent and the
vitality of her detective.

It is only in recent years, and thanks to her friend Barbara Reynolds,
that we have come to respect her as a remarkable letter-writer.  This
correspondence covers the years 1937--43, the years of the Second World
War, of air raids, the threat of invasion, difficult and congested
travel, the blackout and inadequate or nonexistent domestic help.
Nevertheless,

they were years of high creativity.  She wrote plays, two religious
dramas including the notorious radio drama The Man Born to Be King (the
first time an actor had impersonated Christ on the radio), and two
theological works as well as articles and hundreds of letters, most in
her own hand.  The expense of time and effort must have been
considerable, deflecting energy from her creative work.  But perhaps
for Dorothy L. Sayers, as for others, letter-writing was a form of
creativity.  For someone like myself who has an almost pathological
dislike of initiating or replying to correspondence, and does it badly,
this is difficult to understand.

And prolific letter-writers, if they achieve fame or notoriety, leave
treacherous hostages to fortune.  A letter is paradoxically the most
revealing and the most deceptive of confessional revelations.  We all
have our inconsistencies, prejudices, irrationalities which, although
strongly felt at the time, may be transitory.  A letter captures the
mood of the moment.

The transitory becomes immutably fixed, part of the evidence for the
prosecution or the defence.  And we adapt our style to our
correspondent.

Philip Larkin does not write in the same terms to Kingsley Amis as he
does to Charles Monteith, his editor at Faber, or to Barbara Pym.  Jane
Austen could write with perfect confidence and candour only to
Cassandra and the shafts of asperity, cynicism, even of malice, could
not have been openly expressed in any other way.  In that society,
dependent on family and neighbours for entertainment and a social life,
discretion and more than a little hypocrisy were necessary if life were
to go smoothly, let alone agreeably.  Jane Austen may write, "I was as
civil to them as their bad breath would allow me," but she would not
have wrinkled her nose when they met.

"Her sweetness of temper never failed," wrote her nephew James Edward
Austen-Leigh.  On the contrary, it failed frequently, and if it hadn't
we would not have had the six great novels.

As a result of editing Dorothy L. Sayers's letters, Barbara Reynolds
was able to solve three of the mysteries which have always surrounded
her: Who exactly was the William White who was the father of her
illegitimate son John Anthony?  Why was it not possible for them to
marry?

Why did she choose Southbourne in Hampshire as the place of birth when,
as far as we know, she had no contact with that town?

William White was not the rough, ill-educated motor mechanic he has
sometimes been made out to be, but he does appear to have been
something of an irresponsible cad.  Dorothy and he became lovers on the
rebound from her disastrous and unconsummated affair with John

October 1997 81

Courtos, and in the spring of 1923 she found that she was pregnant.
Barbara Reynolds suggests that it may have been only then that she
discovered that White was already married and had, in fact, a daughter.
He asked his wife to come to London to celebrate the anniversary of
their wedding--they seem to have lived apart for much of the time while
remaining on good terms--and he then confided in her about Dorothy's
pregnancy and asked her to help.  This, with surprising generosity, she
agreed to do.  Mrs.  White invited Dorothy to come to Southbourne for
the last stages of her pregnancy, took a room for her at a guest house
and arranged for her brother, who was a doctor, to attend the birth,
which took place in a nursing home.  It was not revealed to him that he
had been engaged to deliver his brother-in-law's child and Mrs.  White
pledged to keep the baby's existence a secret, and did so until after
Dorothys death in December 1957.  It was only then that she wrote to
her daughter, revealing to her that she had a half-brother.  In 1991
that daughter, now Mrs.  Napier, decided to write to Anthony.  But the
letter, which was sent care of the publishers, Victor Gollancz, was
returned unopened.  John Anthony had then been dead for seven years.

This must have been a traumatic and utterly miserable part of Dorothy's
life.  She was both egotistical and proud, and now found herself in the
humiliating position of any woman who had loved unwisely and been
careless or unlucky enough to become pregnant.  But I doubt whether, in
Sayers's case, it was love; Courtos had cured her of that debilitating
waste of spirit.

To have to rely on her lover's wife must have been particularly
galling.

No wonder, in the novels, Sayers's alter ego Harriet Vane makes a
number of caustic comments about the humiliating burden of gratitude.
It is difficult to know whether Dorothy really got to like Mrs.
White--in many ways a companion in fortune since they had both been
victims of the same feckless, irresponsible man--or whether she
accepted her kindness always with a deep if unacknowledged resentment.
There is a surprisingly ungracious reference to her benefactress in a
letter to Ivy Shrimpton when she had returned to London after leaving
Anthony in Ivy's care.

"I was a bit weary yesterday, because I came home to find that the fool
I'd let my flat to had locked up the keys inside the flat."  Mrs.

White had in fact been living there to send on letters to Dorothy and
to post her letters from London, notably to her parents.  Both of them
died without ever knowing that they had a grandson.  Mrs.  White's
daughter Valerie was with her mother in London and Barbara Reynolds
records

that she remembered the flat clearly, in particular a cat called Agag,
whose name, Dorothy told her, means "he who treads lightly," and that
there was a large supply of children's books in the flat.  If Dorothy
provided those it shows a sympathetic understanding of a child's
needs.

Some mysteries remain, principally why Dorothy waited until she was
returning to work to leave her son in the care of her cousin Ivy
Shrimpton.  Had she been pressed to have him adopted--then the easiest
way out--and later relented?  If so, one would like to think that the
relationship gave her greater pleasure in her later life than in fact
proved the case.  She received neither disinterested affection nor
support from any of the men important to her, including her husband and
her son.

Small wonder that in Lord Peter Wimsey she created a fantasy figure
with whom she could safely fall in love.  She moved on from him in
later life but she never repudiated him.  Unlike the other men in her
life, he never let her down.

SATURDAY, 4-TH OCTOBER

Today was the blessing of grandson Tom and Mary's marriage, the civil
ceremony of which took place last month in a restaurant in Cambridge.

I went to Southwold in great hopes that the day would be everything the
young people and the family, in particular Clare, needed; for her it
was the blessing rather than the civil ceremony which was important.

All went perfectly and there was great happiness.  My eldest grandchild
Katie had interrupted her solo sponsored walk round the British Isles
and had taken a train to be with us.  Katie had set out on 2nd April
1997 on a six-month hike over 2,500 miles round Britain in aid of the
Calvert Trust Exmoor and the Chernobyl Children's Project.  She will
just rest for the night and then go back and continue the walk.  The
weather today was perfect, the sky blue with a few drifting clouds, the
light marvelous as it always is in East Anglia, and Blythburgh church,
like a great ship moored in the marshes, took one's breath away.  Mary
and Tom had gone to a great deal of trouble.  Mary looked beautiful in
a simple sheath dress in bright orange which was good with her skin and
large dark eyes.  She carried a small posy of marigolds and green
foliage and had made similar posies to decorate the ends of the pews.

October 1997 83

The ceremony was to have been in a small upper room over the porch, but
Mary was afraid that I would find the narrow twisting stairway too
claustrophobic to climb.  So the blessing was held before the altar
with the family sitting opposite each other in the choir stalls.  Tom
and Mary had devised the ceremony with the help of Father Barry, the
parish priest, and it was a mixture of Christian liturgy with a reading
by Clare from an Eastern mystic, and translated Gaelic blessings and
prayers because Tom and Mary had first met in Ireland.  Father Barry
seemed to take the innovations in his stride and the service was simple
and very moving.

Afterwards we piled out into the sunshine where a patient group of
people were waiting for the church to be reopened.  They joined in the
general laughter and happiness and Clare asked one of them to take a
photograph of the group.

"I thought you'd never ask me," he said.

"I've been waiting here for ages."  Let's hope it comes out.

Afterwards, back at the Southwold house, there was a cake provided by
Clare with the Union Jack and Australian flag, and champagne from Peter
of a quality seldom met with at weddings large or small.  Katie looked
bonny and happy.  Her journey seems to be a spiritual odyssey as well
as a great feat of endurance.  Granddaughter Eleanor wasn't well, but
had insisted on coming.  I think she is finding her teaching job
exceptionally arduous.  The children, apart from the ill-discipline one
expects these days, have had no home training either in manners or
social skills, and their attention span is so short that learning is
almost impossible.

But Nell said that she was trying hard to establish good relationships
with the parents of some of the most difficult children.  They might
come up to the school to confront her belligerently, but once they
understood she was genuinely trying to help their child, they became
cooperative and grateful.  But it really is an extraordinarily tough
job.  I'm not surprised that we have a shortage of good teachers.  I'm
sometimes amazed that we have any.

I'm glad that the day was so successful.  It will be a wonderful memory
for all of us, and particularly for Clare.  Tom is an only son and it
will be hard for her to say goodbye to him when he leaves for
Australia.

SUNDAY, 5TH OCTOBER

I went to ii o'clock Mass at All Saints, Margaret Street.  One of the
post Communion hymns was "Jesu, Good Above All Other," a hymn
frequently sung at assembly at Cambridge High School.  It is odd how
hymns can trigger off memories of the past more strongly than visual
scenes or smells.  At all the schools I attended we had morning
assembly consisting of prayers including the Lord's Prayer, a reading
from scripture and a hymn.  My memory of the British School in Ludlow
is that we had no hymn books but sang the same hymns over and over
again.

Could this really be so?  During prayers the older children, those
nearing eleven, by some childish unwritten prescription were privileged
merely to bow their heads and loosely link their fingers.  We, the
smaller ones, had to raise our arms, palms pressed.

I can't have been at the National School long before we moved to
Cambridge, and I began half-way through the first term of the new
school year at the High School.  Here too every morning began with
assembly.  We would file into the hall by form while one of the more
musical girls would thump out a march on the piano.  The Headmistress,
Miss Dovey, commonly called The Dove, would stand there in her gown,
the other mistresses ranged against the walls, also gowned.  I remember
on my first day how impressed I was by this first sight of academic
dress, the visible symbol that I was, indeed, a High School pupil.

I was born and bred in the distinctive odour of Anglicanism, which
childhood memory identifies as the smell of old prayer books, flowers,
brass, stone and polished wood, the whole overlaid by the occasional
sweet pungency of incense.  I early grew accustomed to its services.

Because Father, a middle-grade civil servant, was relatively poor, my
parents employed no resident servant to help look after us children,
even in those days when wages were low.  This meant that, until we
moved to Cambridge, when my father gave up going to church, the whole
family attended Sunday Evensong together.

I must have been about five years old when we moved from Oxford to
Ludlow and I can remember long autumnal Sunday evenings (my memory is
always of going to church in the fading light and coming out into
darkness): my brother fast asleep against my mother, my sister
dozing,

October 1997 85

and myself reading the Book of Common Prayer to relieve the boredom of
sermons which were not only long but invariably well above my
understanding.  I was fascinated by the prayer book--less by the
liturgy than by the accompanying text.  I can remember at a very early
age being impressed by the rubric in the Communion Service that when in
times of plague no one could be found to take Communion with the sick
then the priest only might do so, and I would sit there in the darkened
church with a vivid imagining of crosses on doors, wailing voices and
the heroic figure of the cloaked priest moving silently and swiftly
through the deserted streets, bearing the sacred vessels.

But my experience of church-going was even earlier.  Both my parents
had a deep affection for church music, my mother from nostalgia and
sentiment, my father because he loved organ music, and they would
frequently attend Sung Evensong in the College chapels as well as the
services in the Cathedral.  I would be wheeled in my pram and left
outside the chapel doors (this was an age when mothers had no fear of
their children being snatched), or even carried, sleeping, into the
chapel.  Thus listening to the music and hearing the liturgy of the
church were two of my very early and formative experiences and
Cranmer's magnificent cadences seeped into my first consciousness.

When we lived in the house called The Woodlands on the fringes of
Ludlow our nearest church was over the bridge at Ludford.  I have only
two memories of Ludford church: the tortoise stove which flared
dramatically when the wind changed, reminding me of the tongues of fire
at Whitsun, and a remarkable prayer book which had been left in the pew
in which we normally sat.  It had heavy brass clasps which I would
discreetly click open and shut during the service, and one of my
earliest temptations was the wish somehow to conceal the prayer book
and take it home with me.  Surely it wouldn't be stealing.  I should be
returning with it every Sunday evening.  It was the first object I
remember wanting to possess with real passion.

I have a memory, too, of Ludford Sunday school.  All the children were
given a card with blank spaces and each week we were handed a coloured
sticker of a biblical scene to fix to the appropriate space.  I had no
choice about attending Sunday school but, even if I had, it would have
been important to complete my card without any humiliating blanks.
After a common prayer and hymn we would disperse to sit in little
groups according to age.  Our group had a teacher who must have been
extremely inexperienced; perhaps she was filling in for someone

more orthodox.  Certainly she spent little time in telling us Bible
stories, but did recount the more lurid examples from Foxes Book of
Martyrs,

which both thrilled and half-terrified us.  I don't think these gory
details of rackings and burnings kept me awake at night, nor did they
affirm me as a natural Protestant.

My mother in particular was naturally ecumenical and had friends who
were Roman Catholics and others who were Methodists or belonged to the
more esoteric Protestant sects.  It was never at any time suggested to
me that one form of Christianity was necessarily superior to any other.
My mother, indeed, was much in demand as a member of the Talkers
Circuit and was frequently asked to address meetings of the Women's
Bright Hour.  I can remember being taken with her and sitting, legs
dangling, among the female audience while my mother gave comforting and
lively little homilies on "Meals in the Bible,"

"Journeys in the Bible," or any other similar theme on which she could
hang her gentle moralizing.  Mother enjoyed amateur theatricals but had
no opportunity to participate except at concerts in aid of the church.
I remember a performance of Babes in the Wood which she wrote or
produced (probably both) and in which Edward was a babe, and Monica and
I gnomes.  Then there was the Sunday school dance troupe.  Dressed in
such costumes as she could improvise, we would perform deeply
inauthentic folk dances, prancing uncertainly across the stage while
Mother mouthed encouragement and occasional desperate instructions from
the piano.

When we moved from The Woodlands to a tall terraced house in Linney
View overlooking the water meadows and close to Ludlow Castle, we began
attending St.  Lawrence's parish church, where my father sang in the
choir.  Here, too, our usual service was Evensong.  There seemed, as I
remember, to have been a social distinction between Mat tins, sometimes
followed by Holy Communion, and the evening service.

Those who had servants to cook their Sunday lunch went in the
morning;

those who, like my mother, had to do all their own housework and
cooking, usually found it more convenient to go in the evening.  But
occasionally on special days we would be taken to a Sung Holy Communion
and I can remember the great glory of these occasions and my sense that
something mysterious and extremely important was happening at the
altar, and that, left in the pew with my brother and sister while my
parents went up to receive the wafer and wine, I was temporarily
deprived of something which one day would be mine also and which I
would enter into as I might an inheritance.  It was, too, an
important

October 1997 87

Sunday for us when it was my father's turn to carry the processional
cross, the pride of the occasion being somewhat dimmed for me by the
terrifying fear that one day he might drop it.

My mother's faith was uncritical, unintellectual, simple and
sentimental.

It provided solace, nostalgia, reassurance and such social life as she
enjoyed.  She liked us to say our evening prayers at her knee, a
practice which obviously gave her satisfaction but which I found
acutely embarrassing.  I accepted that there must be public prayers in
church but felt that private prayer should be a matter between me and
God.  But religion in our home was never made into a source of guilt.
We were made to feel guilty enough, but these were sins against an
occasionally terrifying earthly father, not against God.  God and fear
seemed to me two opposing, irreconcilable ideas.  And because my mother
in particular took a lively part in church affairs, I never from my
earliest age assumed that churchgoers were necessarily morally superior
to other people, since experience showed me that they were not.  There
were the seemingly inevitable disputes at Easter-time and Harvest
Festival about who should and should not decorate the altar and pulpit,
and my mother voiced her dissatisfaction at always being given one of
the darkest windows.  There were the usual arguments between the
organist and the vicar about the hymns and the music, and the annual
church fete and sale of work provoked mutterings about members of the
congregation notable for their bossiness.  But the church was always
there, immutable, unchanging, comforting and secure, and the year given
a recognizable shape by its festivals and seasons.

When we moved to Cambridge we no longer worshipped as a family.

My brother gained a place in the choir at Clare College, which kept him
busy singing the services on Sunday and attending rehearsals on some
weekdays, and my mother attended St.  Mary's parish church.
Occasionally I went with her but my school friend and I preferred the
smaller St.

Edward's Church, where within two years we were both prepared for
confirmation by Father Colin Marr.  Looking back, it seems that I took
confirmation as very much a rite of passage unaccompanied by any
particular spiritual enthusiasm.  In those days candidates were not
confirmed in their own parish church but together in a large group
either in the Cathedral or in a church sufficiently large for the
purpose.  My best friend Joan and I were confirmed together at St.
Luke's Church in Cambridge by the Bishop of Ely and I remember the
massed pews of white clad veiled girls and, opposite, the boys in their
blue Sunday-best suits.

St.  Edward's Church, in defiance of its traditions, was going through
a brief period of High Anglicanism, and we both went to confession
before confirmation.  Father Colin had suggested that it would be
helpful if we listed our sins so that none were forgotten, and I can
remember to my chagrin that Joan's list was twice the length of mine,
and my relief at discovering that, whereas I had put down "unkindness
to members of the family" as one sin, she had listed her family members
separately to produce a far more impressive total.  Even so, I felt
that my offering was hardly worthy of Father Colin's attention, a
thought which, alas, would not occur to me today.  Occasionally our
current boyfriends from the Perse or the boys' grammar school (the word
"followers" would be a more appropriate description since we never
encouraged them) would attend the morning service in an attempt to
ingratiate themselves with us and we would spend much time during the
sermon throwing them discouraging and disapproving looks.

But it was King's College Chapel which, during these years of early
adolescence, provided for me my most meaningful religious experience.

Evensong was sung at half-past three on Sundays and in the evening on
weekdays, and I would often drop in when cycling home from school.  I
can recall the solemnity, the grandeur and the beauty of the building,
the high, soaring magnificence of the roof, the candle-lit gloom, the
decorous procession of the boys of the choir, the order and the beauty
of the traditional service.  This, I believed then and still do
believe, was what worship should be.  I think I probably realized even
then that I was in danger of confusing worship of God with a strong
emotional and aesthetic response to architecture, music and literature,
but it seemed to me that religion could be an aesthetic experience and
that God should be worshipped in the beauty of holiness.

From an early age I have taken little pleasure in sermons; it is the
more reprehensible that I have occasionally succumbed to the temptation
to accept invitations to deliver them.  Special children's services
have always been anathema to me and I greatly deplore the present
fashion for rewriting the Eucharistic prayer to make it suitable for
children.  I must have listened to thousands of sermons during a
lifetime of churchgoing, but few have remained permanently in memory.
The fault no doubt lies in my arrogance.  From childhood I wanted to
question the preacher and to engage in discussion, particularly when
the points he was putting forward differed greatly from those
propounded in the previous Sunday sermon.

After all, even in school we could put up our hands, ask a question,

October 1997 89

seek elucidation of half-understood points.  There seemed something
unnatural in a whole congregation listening in silence to one person's
voice without the chance to intervene.

But if as a child I disliked the sermon, I loved the hymns, and this
affection has remained with me.  The soaring triumph of the
processional Easter hymns, the celebration of All Saints' Day, with the
hymn "For All the Saints," which was my mother's favourite, and the
plangent melancholy of the evening hymns, particularly "The Day Thou
Gavest, Lord, Has Ended," sung while the church windows darkened and
the mind moved forward to the walk through the churchyard between the
gleaming tombstones in the evening dusk.  Some of my early religious
memories are of the hymns and my mother's rich and overloud contralto
and my own piping treble.  Some of them still have the power to move me
to tears.

The Church of England in my childhood was the national church in a very
special sense, the visible symbol of the country's moral and religious
aspirations, a country which, despite great differences of class,
wealth and privilege, was unified by generally accepted values and by a
common tradition, history and culture, just as the Church was unified
by Cranmer's magnificent liturgy.  There were, of course, varieties of
practice and little superficial resemblance between the multi-candled
ceremonial, the incense and Stations of the Cross found in the extreme
High Church and the simplicities of an evangelical church which could
have been mistaken for a nonconformist chapel.  But it was possible to
attend different churches--on holiday, for example--and feel
immediately at home, finding in the pew not a service sheet with a
series number, but the familiar and unifying Book of Common Prayer.

The importance of the Church of England as the national church was
perhaps most clearly shown on Armistice Day, when whole communities
gathered in their parish church, united in sorrowful remembrance.  To
be born in 1920, two years after the end of the slaughter of a
generation, was to be aware from one's earliest years of a universal
grieving which was part of the air one breathed.  Today I frequently
hear people and families referred to as being Christian as if they were
members of a minority and slightly eccentric sect.  In my childhood the
great majority of the population, whether or not they regularly
attended a place of worship, thought of themselves as Christians, and
most described themselves as C of E. The English have always respected
and felt a devotion to their national church, provided they are not
expected regularly to attend its services.

My early religious experience, like all the experiences of childhood,
has both formed and influenced my subsequent years.  I have inherited a
love of and devotion to the Church of England which is still strong,
although I sometimes find it difficult today to recognize the church
into which I was baptized.  Much of its former dignity, scholarly
tolerance, beauty and order, have been not so much lost as wantonly
thrown away, together with its incomparable liturgy.  The King James
Bible and the Book of Common Prayer have both been central to my life
and to my craft as a novelist.  In particular, the words of the Prayer
Book are so much part of my consciousness that I do not need to
remember them, search for them or concentrate on them, but can release
my mind to enter into that communion with the unseen, unknowable God
which I call prayer.  I still see myself as a searcher after truth
rather than as one confident she has found answers to the great and
eternal questions of human existence, not least the problem of the
suffering of the innocent, and at seventy-seven I do not think I shall
find all the answers now.

MONDAY, 6TH OCTOBER

Publication day of A Certain Justice, which was launched at a party
given by Faber this evening in Middle Temple Hall.  For me publication
day is never an unalloyed pleasure.  Like several writers I know, I
would sometimes like to go abroad incognito and lie low until the fuss
is over, returning only when the best and worst are known.  But it
helps to have a few preliminary good reviews, or the assurance of them,
and in this I have been fortunate.

A Certain Justice is one of the novels I have most enjoyed writing,
largely because of my fascination with criminal law and the fun and
interest I had in researching the book.  It began, as do nearly all my
novels, with the setting.  I had been to the 11:15 service in the
Temple Church, to which I occasionally go when I feel the need to hear
Mattins beautifully said in accordance with the Book of Common Prayer
and with superb accompanying music.  Strolling after the service
through the Temple and into Middle Temple Lane, I was struck by the
contrast between the peace, the traditions, the history and the ordered
beauty of this unique part of London and the appalling events with
which cri mi

October 1997 91

nal barristers daily deal in courts like the Old Bailey.  I thought
that it would be exciting to bring murder, the ultimate crime, into the
heart of this bastion of law and order, striking down a female
barrister of the criminal Bar in her own chambers.  At once, as has
happened with all my detective novels, this initial inspiration was
followed by the heart-lifting certainty that I would write another
book.

I was extremely lucky with the research.  By chance at a public dinner
I sat next to Gavyn Arthur, who inquired what I was working on.  When I
said I was researching a new novel to be set in the Middle Temple, he
told me that he was in Chambers there and would be happy to help.  This
help, generously given, proved invaluable.  Within minutes he had saved
me from what could have been a serious error if I had myself failed to
detect it.  He asked which detective I was employing on the case.  When
I said Adam Dalgliesh, he reminded me that the Temple is within the
jurisdiction of the City of London Police, not of New Scotland Yard.

This was something I knew but had completely forgotten and might not
have remembered in time.  I have got over the difficulty by placing my
imaginary court and chambers on the boundary between the two
jurisdictions so that at least part of the unfortunate victim's body
lies within the territory of the Metropolitan Police.  Gavyn Arthur
provided me with maps of the Temple showing the entrances and exits,
arranged for me to speak to lawyers and clerks in Chambers, to have
lunch with the judges at the Old Bailey and to watch a trial in Court
Number One.  He also kindly vetted the details of legal procedure in
the court scene with which the book opens.  It was with genuine
gratitude that I acknowledged his help in my foreword.

I suppose that one of the small deprivations of age is that nothing,
and certainly not great success or triumph, is ever as exciting as it
was in youth.  This is probably a mercy, since pain and distress are
also less acute.  But I woke with a thankful heart for having been
given the book.

This is always how my writing has seemed to me; nothing to do with my
own cleverness but born of a talent which I have done nothing
personally to deserve.

Faber sent my usual driver to collect Joyce and myself and we arrived
in very good time.  Middle Temple Hall was ideal for the launch.  As
always it looked magnificent and the publicity department at Faber had
been clever over the embellishments.

The party was a great success and I think everyone there enjoyed it.  I
was a little afraid that we might break up into groups; lawyers,
writers,

journalists, family and so on, but that didn't happen, and everyone
seemed to find a kindred spirit to talk to.  There was great advantage
in having plenty of room for the one hundred or so present.  I can no
longer tolerate crowded launch parties where the level of din is so
high that ears and brain are continually assaulted, I can't speak
without inducing a sore throat, and am totally unable to hear anyone.
This really was a civilized occasion.

Matthew Evans, Chairman of Faber, made a short, funny and informal
speech and I replied equally briefly.  It was a huge relief to be
holding the party with some excellent reviews behind me.  I am always
desperately sorry for writers who have to go ahead with these jollities
in the knowledge that the book has been poorly received, but it must be
even worse for actors who spend long weeks in rehearsal and then are
dependent on one or two really influential reviewers.

I'm frequently asked how much I care about reviews.  I'm tempted to say
not at all, but this is hardly honest.  Most of us do very much welcome
good reviews, not only for our own satisfaction, but because of the
pleasure they give to publishers and friends.  The majority of mine
have been so good that I can have no possible complaint.  One reviewer
was maliciously scathing but he is not someone I would worry about.
There are, of course, some reviewers who use reviewing to compensate
for professional, creative or sexual failure and others who criticize
the author not for the book written, but for the one they think he
should have written.

There are also those who are reviewing not the book but the writer, and
who strongly dislike what they think he stands for, his class, his sex
or, most frequently of all, his politics.  But these are relatively
few, and it is stupid for any writer to take the slightest notice of
them.

When the party ended I got the family together--Lyn and Clare, Peter
and Jane--and we were driven to the Savoy for a very late dinner.  I
had booked in the River Restaurant, hoping for a quiet meal and a river
view, but there was a somewhat noisy small orchestra.  Jane, knowing
how this would affect me, beckoned to the head waiter and asked if we
could go to another part of the hotel.  They disappeared together and
returned five minutes later to say that Jane had approved a table for
five in the Grill Room.  There we ate in comfort a traditional but
uninspiring meal, and then dropped Clare and Lyn by taxi at Oxford
Circus and came home here so that Jane and Peter could pick up their
car and drive back to Oxford.  By then all of us were tired, myself
particularly, too tired to write this before bed.  But it was a good
day, for which I am very grateful.

October 1997 93

Thinking of reviews has encouraged me mentally to draw up a list of
somewhat presumptuous advice for reviewers, among whom I list myself.

1. Always read the whole of the book before you write your review

2. Don't undertake to review a book if it is written in a genre you
particularly dislike.

3. Review the book the author has written, not the one you thinkhe/she
should have written.

4. If you have prejudices--and you're entitled to them--face them
frankly and, if appropriate, acknowledge them.

5. Be scathingly witty if you must and can, but never be deliberately
cruel, except to those writers who themselves deal in cruelty, and
therefore presumably expect it.

6. If you absolutely hate the book and have nothing either interesting
or positive to say, why review it?  Any review gives a book much-wanted
publicity and it is a pity to waste space on a book which is
meretricious or dishonest when you could be saying something of value
about one worth reading.  An exception to this rule is an eagerly
awaited major work by a well known writer when the verdict of leading
critics is expected.

7. If you are given a book to review by a close friend and you strongly
dislike it, don't review it.  We none of us like hurting our friends
and the temptation to be over-kind is too strong.

8. Resist the temptation to use a review to pay back old scores or to
vent your dislike of the author's sex, class, politics, religion or
lifestyle.  Try to believe that it is possible for people of whom you
disapprove to write a good book.

TUESDAY, 7TH OCTOBER

Publicity began in earnest today.  Andy arrived to take me to
Hatchard's, calling in at Faber to pick up Nicola Winter from
Publicity.  There I spent an hour signing with a nonstop line, many of
them Americans.  It is always a pleasure to meet readers and mine are
so generous and
grateful that it makes me feel humble.  Then upstairs to sign books which
had been ordered, many of them with specific dedications.  These can
occasionally be a problem, some readers requesting protestations of
passionate devotion while others want a message to Mum, Dad or a
husband which should, I feel, more appropriately be written by the
purchaser than by me.

Roger Katz and his team helped.  He must be one of the most
enthusiastic booksellers in London and one of the best read.  We worked
away, meanwhile discussing the Booker list, the general view being that
it was inexplicable.  I paused briefly for some excellent sandwiches
and a bottle of red wine over which Roger had taken considerable
trouble.  Altogether I signed over 700 books.

Then on to Lincoln's Inn, where the BBC filmed me for a small interlude
to be inserted in The Late Show.  I had two passages to read and a
short interview, then some outdoor shots in the cloisters.

I arrived home in time to see Joyce and talk over yesterday's party,
always a pleasure, and then watched the news before an early bed.  I
went to one of my bookcases to find a novel for my bedtime reading,
something familiar but not too familiar, nothing new or too exciting
since I need tonight to promote sleep, not discourage it.  Inevitably I
found myself still taking down books half an hour later.

I have always wanted to have a library, a room in which I can shelve
all my books, and there is really no reason why this shouldn't have
been possible.  It just happens that the houses I have owned over the
years have never seemed suitable and today, as always, I have books in
every room, arranged in no particular order.  Recently I have at least
made an effort to sort them into categories so that I know where to
look for fiction, for poetry or for biography, but it is a slow
business because the crowded shelves disgorge an extraordinary variety
of books acquired over sixty years, some of which I had forgotten I
owned.

When, I wondered, did I acquire this copy of Michael Arlen's The Green
Hat.  It was apparently a bestseller in its day but now, opening it, I
find it impossible to continue after even one page.  Then there are the
two novels by Ernest Raymond, also bestsellers between the wars.  My
copy of Tell England is probably the one I first read as a
fourteen-year old, ending in floods of tears after the final chapter,
which makes it plain that the young soldier--narrator has died with his
two friends in the First World War.  This book was lent to all my
friends who shared my passionate interest in this boys' story of public
school life which could have

October 1997 95

had no possible relevance to our own school experience.  With
increasing years and sophistication I probably wondered how the
idealistic schoolmaster, Radley, escaped the suspicions of the police;
nowadays he would certainly be invited to a session with the local
social worker.  But the book was published in a more innocent age and I
suppose he was an example of the dedicated bachelor schoolmaster whose
devotion to boys was emotional rather than physical.

The other Ernest Raymond novel, shelved next to it, We the Accused, had
a more lasting influence on me.  It dealt with a murder case obviously
based on the Crippen/Ethel le Neve tragedy and was the first book I
read which described the reality of a judicial hanging.  After reading
it I became a lifelong opponent of capital punishment.

Another volume, which literally fell at my feet since it had been
pushed behind the Ernest Raymonds, was a chubby red-covered book, which
proclaims itself on the frontispiece as "An Authentic History of Maria
Marten, or the Red Barn" and which, although it carries no date, must
have been published soon after the execution of William Corder for the
murder of his pregnant fiancee in the Red Barn in Polstead, Suffolk.

I recall that it was given to me by a fellow traveller on the train
from Ipswich to Liverpool Street and feel some guilt that I can't now
remember his name.  The murder is remarkable because Mrs.  Ann Marten,
stepmother of Maria, had frequent dreams that Maria had been murdered
and her body buried in the Red Barn.  For a time her husband paid no
attention, but in the end he took a spade and went with a friend called
Bowtell to begin his search.  After removing a foot-and-a-half of soil
they discovered Maria's body.

After Corder left Polstead, confident that his secret was safe, he went
to London and advertised for a wife.  The interest in the little red
book is that it contains both his advertisement and the many letters he
received from women obviously desperate to escape their lives of
deprivation, demeaning dependence or hopeless poverty.  Some of the
women are obviously well educated, but in 1827 would have had no
profession open to them except that of governess.  The advertisement
which seduced them into replying appeared in the Morning Herald on i3th
November and was as follows:

matrimony--A Private Gentleman, aged 24, entirely independent, whose
disposition is not to be exceeded, has lately lost the chief of his
family by the hand of Providence, which has occa

sioned discord among the remainder, under circumstances most
disagreeable to relate.  To any female of respectability who would
study for domestic comfort, and willing to confide her future happiness
in one every way qualified to render the marriage state desirable, as
the advertiser is in affluence, the lady must have the power of some
property, which may remain in her own possession.

Many very happy marriages have taken place through means similar to
this now resorted to, and it is hoped no one will answer this through
impertinent curiosity, but should this meet the eye of any agreeable
lady who feels desirous of meeting with a sociable, tender, kind, and
sympathizing companion, they will find this advertisement worthy of
notice.  Honour and secrecy may be relied on.  As some little security
against idle applications, it is requested that letters may be
addressed (post-paid) to AZ."  care of Mr.  Foster, stationer, No. 68,
Leadenhall Street, which will meet with the most respectful
attention.

What is extraordinary is that William Corder did indeed find a suitable
and affectionate wife by this means.  They married and set up a private
school and when eventually, after the discovery of Maria Marten's body,
he was apprehended, she remained a support to her husband to the day of
his execution.

WEDNESDAY, 8TH OCTOBER

John Mortimer gave a luncheon today at the Royal Society of Literature
to say goodbye as our Chairman.  There were about twenty people
present, most of whom I knew, and some of them friends I hadn't seen
for too long.  I sat between John and A. N. Wilson--a guarantee of good
conversation spiced with gossip.

John is leaving the Society because he needs to devote his time and
energy to the Royal Court Theatre, which has received a Lottery
grant.

Like many Lottery grants, this alleviates some problems but produces
others.  There is little point in giving a capital grant of millions if
a theatre can't meet its running costs, or of expecting it to
contribute an equal sum when it's already overdrawn.  John is to be
succeeded as Chairman

October 1997 97

by Michael Holroyd, so we'll be in good and experienced hands.  John
has done well by the Society.  When he arrived we were one of those
long established and peculiarly English organizations which people
respect and regard as important but know virtually nothing about. There
are considerable advantages in being an organization which manages to
be highly respected without having to do anything in particular, but
John thought that we should be more active in promoting literature, and
now indeed we are.  This has been achieved without any loss of the
spirit and ethos of the Society, a tribute to John's influence and
wisdom.

At 5:45 Andy called to take me to the bookshop Books Etc.  in Charing
Cross Road, where I was to give a short talk, answer questions and then
sign copies of the novel.  There was a full house and the questions
following the talk were lively, continuous and intelligent.  These
mixtures of talk and signing at book shops are usually referred to as
"events," which puts me in mind of horse trials although, thankfully,
they don't in my case last for three days, and the only high jumps come
in question time.

One of the questions I was asked is how I arrive at the title of a
novel.

I find the question of titles intriguing.  I suppose the romantically
minded see the process of choosing a title as the equivalent of naming
a child.  The title remains while the creation is in being and evokes
different reactions from those who hear or read it.  What one hopes to
achieve is a title which is memorable, euphonious, original and
appropriate to the work.  Many English novels have what I think of as
utilitarian titles--short, highly relevant but hardly imaginative,
often the name of the chief character: David Copperfield, Jane Eyre,
Tristram Shandy, Daniel Deronda.  Then there are the place names, often
used when the setting is so fundamental to the story that it assumes
the importance of a character:

Mansfield Park, Wuthering Heights, Howard's End.  The utilitarian title
may also describe the central theme of the work: Pride and Prejudice,
Sense and Sensibility.  Titles I find particularly memorable are: All
Passion Spent by Vita Sackville-West, A Handful of Dust by Evelyn
Waugh, and Appointment in Samarra by John O'Hara.  Both the latter
would make wonderful titles for crime novels and I wish I'd thought of
them first.

O'Hara's title for his novel set in America during the Depression is
brilliant but would, of course, be meaningless if he hadn't prefaced it
with the short fable about Death encountering a servant in the market
place.  The servant returns to his master, terrified because Death has
met him and made a threatening gesture towards him.  He must escape
immediately and hide himself in Samarra.  Later that day his master
goes

to the market and, encountering Death, asks why he made a threatening
gesture, to which Death replies: "It was not a threatening gesture,
merely one of surprise.  I did not expect to see your servant in the
market as I have an appointment with him this evening in Samarra."

My own titles come to me either very early, usually before I begin
writing, or are difficult to find.  I find it unsettling to have to
work with a provisional title, almost as unsettling as changing the
name of a character, and it is always a relief to have the title
settled before I begin writing.

I had no trouble, for example, with Death of an Expert Witness or An
Unsuitable Job for a Woman, or with titles taken from the Book of
Common Prayer or the Bible, which always provide an intriguing
resonance:

Original Sin, Devices and Desires.  Two, however, caused me particular
trouble.

My novel Innocent Blood, which deals with an adopted eighteen-year old
discovering her true parents, was originally called The Blood Tie.  The
book had reached the stage of page proofs when Faber discovered that
the title had been used very recently.  There is, of course, no
copyright in titles, but no novelist wants to duplicate a recent title,
or one already associated in readers' minds with an existing book.  It
proved extremely difficult to find an alternative.  The Blood Relation,
an uninspiring choice, had also been used recently.  The book was ready
to be printed and still no satisfactory title had been found despite
frequent searches through The Oxford Book of Quotations--always a
useful source when in trouble.

Remembering how a Roman Catholic friend of mine prays to St.

Anthony for the recovery of things lost, it occurred to me that the
saint might be prepared to help a Protestant find something which,
although not lost in the strict sense, had certainly eluded discovery.
So I said the appropriate words that night in bed, and awoke next
morning with the title Innocent Blood in my mind, and on my lips.  It
was an infinitely better choice than the one originally proposed and I
immediately telephoned Faber in London and Scribner's in New York with
the happy news.  My friend, apparently unsurprised at my success,
merely enquired what the saint had "charged"--or rather, what I had
subsequently paid.

I made a mental note to fulfill my dues when next passing a Roman
Catholic church.

The other title which caused problems was A Taste for Death.  This was
taken from four lines of verse which I had read, I think in a Spectator
article, some years previously:

October 1997 99

Some can gaze and not be sick, But I could never learn the trick.

There's this to say for blood and breath They give a man a taste for
death.

At the time I scribbled down the four lines, telling myself that "A
Taste for Death" would be an admirable title for my next novel and
would, indeed, probably prove suitable no matter what the plot.  When
the novel was finished, I tried to find the source of the verse,
expecting little difficulty.  In fact the lines were totally elusive.
My editor and I, helped by Faber staff, culled Auden, Kipling and any
other poet who seemed likely to be the author.  Again the weeks passed
and the novel was due to be printed.  It seemed to me that the title
was meaningless without the verse, but it could hardly be printed from
memory and without acknowledgement.  At the last minute the source was
discovered simultaneously by an elderly lady living in the Cathedral
Close at Norwich and a young woman working on the book pages of the New
York Times.  The lines are by A. E. Housman, published among his later
work, untitled and not part of a longer poem.  So perhaps it isn't
surprising that the quotation eluded us for so long.

FRIDAY, 10TH OCTOBER

To Cheltenham by car with Nicola to give a talk at the Cheltenham
Literary Festival.  All the publicists with whom I have worked both
here, in America and in Australia have been women and I don't find this
surprising.

The job requires a combination of qualities which I think are more
often found in women than men: an eye for detail, particularly time
(missing a train can upset the whole schedule), an ability both to get
on with a wide variety of people while protecting the writer from
overenthusiastic demands, and to be supportive, encouraging, soothing
or bracing in response to the individual author's personality and
needs.

Writers are not the easiest of people, especially soon after
publication day, always a time of trauma.  This morning both of us set
out in good heart.

It has been a glorious day with great snub-nosed clouds like ethereal
dirigibles against a sky of astonishing blue.  The feel of the air was
spring, the colours the beginning of a late autumn.  I like Cheltenham
and the city looked its best in the sunlight, the long red banners
advertising the Festival giving it the air of an elderly respectable
dowager a little surprised at her unaccustomed gaiety.  The Festival is
one of the most successful and best organized of the English literary
events and attracts large and knowledgeable audiences.  There were 350
for my talk.  I enjoyed myself and so, I think, did they.

It is difficult to assess how a talk will go.  but much seems to depend
on whether I am tired, on the ambience and on the initial response of
the audience.  I find it surprising that writers today are expected to
be public performers.  Addressing an audience of 350 for forty to
forty-five minutes and then taking questions is a public performance
and writers, often the most solitary of people, are seldom actors.  I
wonder how Virginia Woolf would have coped with today's demand that
successful writers be seen and heard.

I returned to find a call on the answer phone from granddaughter
Beatrice.  She is due here with her bridge partner, Rachel, and
Rachel's boyfriend to play bridge in the English squad.  Bea said that
there were two more friends, whom she ironically described as
clean-living boys, who had no bed for the night, so she has told them
that they could turn up with their sleeping bags and sleep at my house.
Last year there was only one clean-living lad.  Next year, no doubt,
there will be three or four clean-living boys trooping in with their
sleeping bags.  However, there is plenty of room and I like civilized,
lively and intelligent young people, although I find this passion for
bridge incomprehensible in anyone under forty.

This evening there was a call from Paul Bogaards of Alfred A. Knopf
about my prospective American tour in January.  I had queried whether I
could really manage it.  I am due to begin at Boston, then on to New
York, Washington, Chicago, Dayton, Pittsburgh, Dallas, Houston,
Seattle, San Francisco, Los Angeles, and then down to Miami, in just
over a fortnight.  Paul went through the itinerary with me and pointed
out that, with one exception, the flights were not as long as he had
expected.

He thought it was manageable and I knew that it was important, so I
gave in as I usually do.  Time will show whether this was wise.  But I
can be sure of two things: the tour will be organized with efficiency
and carried out in comfort.

October 1997 101

SATURDAY, 11TH OCTOBER

I was driven to Cambridge by Will Atkinson of Faber through
continuously slanting rain to sign books at Heffer's.  We were
fortunate to find a parking space in the garage close to the shop, and
then dashed through the downpour into Waterstone's to sign stock.  The
queue at Heffer's was long by half-past twelve, and progress slow,
mainly because of greeting old friends.  Afterwards, as usual, Heffer's
provided luncheon in the boardroom and I gave an interview for the
local radio.  Grandson Tom and his new wife Mary appeared and Will and
I called in at their house for tea before driving back to London in the
early evening.

TUESDAY, I4TH OCTOBER

To the Booker dinner with Rosemary Goad, who has edited all my books.

It was one of the most enjoyable Booker dinners for us, largely because
we shared a table with Anne Elletson, late of Faber and now a BBC
producer, who is always a delight to meet.  Others at our table were
Clare Short with her newly discovered son; Martyn Goff, administrator
of the Prize, and Geordie Greig of the Sunday Times.  There was some
muttering about the choice of winner, but not, of course, from Martyn,
who is always a model of discretion.  All members of the Booker
Management Committee are sent copies of the shortlist and I have made a
start with the winner, Arundhati Roy's The God of Small Things, but
haven't got very far.  It seems to me somewhat lush and overwritten, a
beginner's attempt at a Naipaul or a Rushdie.  But I admit to
prejudice: I seldom enjoy books seen through the eyes of children, The
Go-Between being a notable exception.

In announcing the prize, the Chairman, Professor Gillian Beer,
suggested there was merit in finding a first novelist as prize-winner;
I think this is a mistaken view.  The Booker jury are there to reward
the best novel of the year.  Was this the best?  Hardly, I felt.  But
then, if we set up ten different juries of five, it is unlikely--except
in a rare year--that they would award the prize to the same book.

Next year will mark the thirtieth anniversary of the Booker Prize.  On
the whole I think it has succeeded in its aim of celebrating the best
of contemporary fiction, although there have been years in which it was
difficult to see the winning novel as even worthy of the shortlist, let
alone the accolade of best novel of the year.  But the prize has always
been controversial and this isn't surprising and is, perhaps, part of
its appeal.

When I chaired the panel of judges in 1987 with Selina Hastings, Allan
Massie, Trevor McDonald and John B. Thompson as my colleagues, we
recognized at our first meeting that literary judgement is inevitably
subjective and that one person's masterpiece is another's pretentious
and incomprehensible absurdity.  For this reason we agreed never to
impugn each other's taste.

The problem for the judges, which existed when I was Chairman and still
exists, is the number of entries.  By the time I had got to the
hundredth novel I was beginning to doubt my own judgement.  The
Management Committee has made efforts to cut down the number of
entries, but too many novels are entered which hardly merit
publication, let alone gaining the shortlist.  Then there is the
problem that publishing houses with a distinguished list can enter only
the same number as smaller houses which may only have published a
couple of novels.  The entry is further complicated by
self-publication, and now by publication on the Internet.  Somehow the
numbers will have to be reduced, but how?

If I were in sole charge of a literary prize I would arrange things
differently.  I would appoint a panel of a dozen or so people
consisting of literary editors, well-regarded reviewers, booksellers
and members of the general public who are lovers of fiction.  Each
member would submit a list of up to fifty novels which he or she
thought worthy of consideration, although there would be no obligation
to read all of them.

From the total it would be possible to compile one list of fifty novels
from those which appeared most frequently.  The judging panel would
select the winner from this fifty, but they would also have the option
of calling in an additional ten.  In this way the reading task would be
far more manageable, it is unlikely that any novel of merit would be
overlooked, and the panel would still have the power to call in a book
by a previously unknown author which didn't appear on the shortlist.

It is for the Chairman of the Booker panel of judges to decide how the
judging panel shall carry out its job, although it is expected that all
members will read all the novels.  The worst way of arriving at the
ulti

October 1997 103

mate shortlist of some five or six is for each panel member to nominate
his or her favourite.  I believe this was done one year, but it is
difficult to see how it could result in a generally accepted first
choice.  I wanted to achieve a shortlist of novels which all the judges
thought worthy of the prize even though we each had a particular
favourite.  The shortlist is inevitably a compromise.  I would
certainly have included at least one novel, Ian McE wan Child in Time,
which another judge heartily disliked and spoke against very strongly,
so the five of us would probably, if judging alone, have produced five
different short lists  One has to remember that the Booker novel can't
reasonably be regarded as the best novel of the year--only time will
determine that--but is simply the book which five very different
people, brought together at one moment in time and after being sated
with months of fiction reading, feel is worthy of the Prize.  Our final
choice of Penelope Lively's Moon Tiger was only arrived at after a long
argument which nearly made us late for the Guildhall dinner, and the
choice was not unanimous.

The Booker, like most literary prizes, has probably given more pleasure
than pain, has certainly stimulated interest in fiction and has
provided its share of entertainment, controversy, malice and general
ill will.

But if I were trying to encourage a young person to read and enjoy
modern fiction I am not sure I would begin by presenting him or her
with the Booker shortlist.

MONDAY, 20TH OCTOBER

On Thursday afternoon I flew to the Isle of Man to give a lecture in
St.

German's Cathedral, organized by the Friends of the Cathedral, on
Friday, and an afternoon talk on Saturday to the island's Prayer Book
Society.

I stayed with Mrs.  Salisbury-Jones in her stone house in the centre of
Castleton.  From my top-floor window I could glimpse the sea which,
under the red and gold sky of early morning, looked like a sheet of
gleaming metal.  Even the sand was golden-yellow.  Mrs.  Salisbury
Jones was welcoming and hospitable and took great trouble to show me
the island on Saturday morning and on Sunday.

The architecture is generally undistinguished but the island itself
much more interesting and attractive than I remembered from one
pre104

vious visit.  It seems that all the variety of scenery found in the
rest of the United Kingdom is present in this small island.  The
charming little ports reminded me of Dorset and the West Country.  The
central hills with the valleys and streams were like parts of Scotland,
while the plain in the west leading down to a pebbled shore with dunes
and marram grass and great round stones reminded me strongly of East
Anglia.  The weather was wonderful and I shall retain a very clear
memory of Sunday afternoon when we drove to Peel.  We found a seat
against the castle walls and sat in the strength of the mellow sunshine
looking across Peel harbour and eating particularly good crab rolls.

I liked the inscription on Bishop Sam's tomb in the ruins of the
Cathedral: "In this house which I share with my brothers the worms in
hope of the resurrection to life lie I, Sam, by divine grace Bishop of
this Island.  Stay reader, look and laugh at the Bishop's palace.  Died
3Oth May, Anno 1662, Samuel Rutter, Lord Bishop of Sodor and Man."

THURSDAY, 23RD OCTOBER

This evening I spoke at a joint Times-Dillons literary event at the
Institute of Education.  I was apprehensive that there wouldn't be much
of an audience, since the charge of 10 seemed to me high.  However,
there were about 350 people present; an interested and very warm
audience.

There was no shortage of questions, and a long line at the subsequent
signing.

Afterwards, Peter Stothard, the editor, took about twelve of us out to
dinner at the Etoile, where I sat next to the Deputy Chief Constable of
Thames Valley Constabulary.  He offered to show me a murder incident
room when I am next in Oxford, and this will be helpful.  Apparently
some of my details in Original Sin were not totally accurate.

Not all the questions after a talk are about my work.  Some people
expect me to be an expert on crime fiction (which I am not), and I'm
frequently asked about my response to real-life crimes and to the death
penalty.  I reply that I have always been an abolitionist, but that
this stance is hardly rational since I do believe that the death
penalty deters.

I am, therefore, prepared to see people put at additional risk of being
murdered rather than live in a country which enacts the death
penalty.

I

October 1997 105

expect my hatred of the death penalty is influenced by my horror of
hanging, surely a barbaric if effective way of putting people to
death.

It seems to me that when I was a child there was far more public and
newspaper interest in murder trials than there is today.  Perhaps those
detailed accounts, often with photographs, satisfied the public's
fascination with murder which, today, is catered to by television
series on crime and the police.  I can remember the pages of broadsheet
which covered the trial in 1931 of Alfred Arthur Rouse, who murdered a
hitchhiker whose identity is still unknown, and can recall the
newspaper pictures of the burnt-out car.  But the murder which evoked a
personal response was that of Vera Page, also in 1931, perhaps because,
like me, she was an eleven-year-old.  Her body--she had been raped and
strangled--was found on the morning of i6th December in the tradesmen's
entrance of a house in Addison Road, Kensington.  She had gone after
school to show her swimming certificates to her grandmother and never
returned home.  I can clearly recall her face from the newspaper
photographs: dark haired, and with the eager bright-eyed look of a
child for whom life is an enchantment.  A neighbour, Percy Orlando
Rust, was an obvious suspect.

He had worn a finger bandage similar to one found on the body, he had
no alibi, and there were other physical clues linking him to the crime.
During questioning by the coroner a woman stood up in court and
shouted, "That man is telling lies, sir."  But the coroner's jury found
the evidence against Rust insufficient and no one was ever brought to
trial.  It still seems inexplicable to me that the police, provided
with so much physical evidence, couldn't solve the case.  Today, with
DNA, there would be no difficulty.  It is extraordinary how that
child's face is imprinted on my imagination.  Perhaps there persists in
the human psyche an atavistic belief that a murder must be solved if
the dead are to rest in peace.

TUESDAY, 28TH OCTOBER

Gill Frost arrived to give me a massage at 8 a.m. and at 9:30 a
journalist rang from New Zealand for a telephone interview, followed by
a call at 10 o'clock from an Australian journalist.

In the afternoon Andy arrived with Rosemary in the car to drive us

to Chipping Norton for a talk in the small theatre there, followed by a
signing.  Rosemary has her left arm in a sling as she fell on the rocks
at Purbeck during the weekend and broke her wrist.  We went first to
have supper with Penelope and Jack Lively at their medieval farmhouse
at Great Rollright.  They then drove us to Chipping Norton, where Andy
had taken his car to find himself a pub meal, and be ready later to
drive us back to London.

The theatre was full, the audience lively and encouraging with
particularly good questions, although I was very tired at the end of
the session, trying to sign for stock while being interviewed
simultaneously by a local journalist.  But this was a very worthwhile
signing, arranged by Elizabeth Sleight, who is the proprietor of a
small independent bookshop in Chipping Norton and is dedicated,
enthusiastic and successful in attracting writers to talk and sign.

I was asked, as I often am, about one of the novels which isn't a
detective story and doesn't feature Adam Dalgliesh: Innocent Blood.
This is the only one of my novels influenced by a real-life murder
case.  It had, in fact, a twofold genesis: a murder and an act of
Parliament.

The inspiration first came when I was working at the Home Office and
was concerned with some of the provisions relating to care orders in
the Children's Act 1975.  This was a DHSS not a Home Office Bill, but
my division had an interest in the provisions relating to juvenile
courts.

But the Bill was primarily concerned with adoption.  Adoption
proceedings were confidential.  A mother placing her child for adoption
would not be told the name of the adopters and they would not know the
identity of the birth mother.  An adopted child would grow up with no
way of finding out its natural parentage.  Parliament took the view
that young people had a right to this knowledge, even though it meant
breaking faith with both those who had adopted a child under the
previous arrangement and those who had parted with a child in the
assurance of secrecy.  The Bill provided that a young person of
eighteen, after counselling with a social worker, should be able to see
his or her birth certificate and have the possibility of beginning a
search for the natural parents.

The murder, which took place some years before the abolition of capital
punishment, was the case of Daniel Raven.  Raven's wife had recently
given birth to their first child, a son, in a Muswell Hill
nursing-home.

The young father called to visit his wife and, on the way home, went to
the house of his parents-in-law, a Mr.  and Mrs.  Goodman, and
battered

October 1997 107

them to death with a television aerial.  He was an obvious suspect and
the police were not short of damning evidence, including his
bloodstained clothing which he had attempted to burn.  He was tried,
convicted and hanged.  When I heard on the radio that Daniel Raven had
been executed that morning for the murder of the Goodmans, I thought
primarily not of him, nor of his victims, but of the young mother and
her baby.

How, if ever, could she break the news?  What would she answer when her
son asked why he had no father or what had happened to his maternal
grandparents?  Imagining myself in her place, I wondered whether I
would even consider placing the child for adoption.

When the Children's Bill was going through Parliament, the memory of
this case surfaced and the idea for the novel was born.  I would write
about an eighteen-year-old, a highly intelligent but unloving girl
adopted by a psychologist and his wife, who began to search for her
parents.

She would have fantasized about her earlier life; that her father was
an aristocrat, her mother perhaps a servant girl in the ancestral
home.

She would discover that her father had murdered a young girl, her
mother had colluded, and that both had been sentenced to life
imprisonment.

Her father had died in prison, but her mother was soon to be released
on licence.  The book would have a double theme: a crime story relating
how the father of the dead child, patiently waiting for the release of
the convicted woman, begins to track her down in London; secondly the
growth of love between the daughter and the mother after the daughter's
decision that they should set up house together.

Although the novel didn't begin with a place, setting is as important
to Innocent Blood as it is to my detective stories.  The father of the
murdered child, Norman Scase, tracks his daughter's murderess through
London.  The city's Underground system, its raucous street markets,
lanes and streets, and the darkly numinous roof of Westminster
Cathedral are all integral parts of the story.  Innocent Blood was one
of three novels--the other two being Death of an Expert Witness and A
Taste for Death--which could not have been written, or at least written
with such authority, without my Home Office experience.

Perhaps this is why I carried on working years after it would have been
possible to live by my writing--if occasionally precariously.  I found
that to be part of the working world was a powerful inspiration as well
as providing useful background information.  And it was Innocent Blood
which made me prosperous.  Before it was published, I had decided to
leave the Home Office six months before my retirement date and had
carefully calculated that I would be able to live in reasonable comfort
until I received my lump sum and pension in August 1980.  The book was
modestly successful in Britain.  It came at a difficult time for my
publishers and was meanly produced, but in the States it rapidly became
number one on the New York bestseller list and received rave reviews.

The film and paperback rights were sold in the same week.  Innocent
Blood meant the end of anxiety about money, and for that I was
grateful.

The film was, in fact, never made, but to sell a lucrative option
without having to watch the result on the screen is considered by many
writers to be an advantage.  Producers still occasionally want to make
it, but the company with the rights is holding on to them.

November

SUNDAY, 2ND NOVEMBER

I have just had a highly enjoyable if exhausting weekend.  Eliza Oxley
had asked me some months ago if I would talk at a dinner in aid of the
Charminster Conservative Party, the dinner to be held at Wolfeton, one
of the oldest and most historic country houses in Dorset.  I would have
driven down with Rosemary, but because of her broken left wrist she
can't drive.  So Andy again took charge and we drove down, using minor
roads where possible, under a sunny sky and through autumn foliage to
Stockbridge.  There we first had a walk round the craft shop, where
Rosemary bought me a necklace as an early Christmas present, and then
went to the Vine pub for lunch.

At Charminster House, where I was to stay overnight, I rested while the
others went to finish preparations at Wolfeton.  The evening was hugely
enjoyable.  There were torches flaming to show us the way to the
massive gatehouse flanked with two solid towers.  Wolfeton must be grim
and probably cold when uninhabited, but with great log fires and banks
of candles it looked wonderful.  It was a typical and perfect Agatha
Christie evening.  The oak-panelled rooms, the pictures, the flickering
candles and the mysterious shadows made Wolfeton the ideal setting for
a 19305 mystery.  Even the names on the table-plan were entirely in
keeping--and I found myself allocating my fellow diners to their
appropriate roles--Captain Gueterbock, Brigadier Proudman, Mrs.  Mould
Graham, Miss Archdale and Captain Thimbleby all have the authentic
Christie ring.  The guests arrived in a mood to enjoy themselves and my
after-dinner talk received more praise and applause than it deserved.

Andy arrived to collect us in time for him to hear the talk.  As a
townsman he couldn't get used to the total blackness of a country
night, or indeed to the silence and emptiness of Charminster House.
Eliza had left a cold dinner for him but I think he would much have
preferred to

seek the conviviality of a local pub if he had dared to venture out. He
said he closed the curtains, shut the doors firmly and wouldn't even
leave the sanctuary of the kitchen to walk the ten yards down the
passage to the television room.  Instead he was fearfully aware of the
row of bells, each labelled with its room, and sat there expecting one
of them to begin ringing in the empty house.  I suppose country people
can be equally ill at ease in town, and wonder how we survive behind
our grilles while the wicked and violent city rages outside.

I sympathize with Andy.  Although I spent my early years in Ludlow amid
beautiful country, I am happiest in towns and cities.  When I visit Tom
and Mary Norman in rural Dorset I always feel I am venturing on
dangerous and alien territory.  The two cats chase mice around the
kitchen table unremarked on by anyone but me, and small bodies of
rodents are left outside the pantry door as morning offerings.  One is
never surprised to find the heads of chickens murdered by a fox and
laid out in a circle like some pagan rite, while dinner guests complain
that the otters, a protected species, are attacking their dogs.  At
night the darkness presses against the windows like a black carpet
while the silence is occasionally broken by the shrieks and screams of
tormented animals.

A night in deep country is a demonstration of nature red in tooth and
claw.

I would certainly feel nervous if required to spend the night alone at
Wolfeton, which I am sure has its ghosts.  The house is charged with a
sense of the past and if it is not haunted in the usual sense, it is
certainly inhabited by more presences than those of the present owners,
Nigel and Katharine Thimbleby.  During the sixteenth century a priest
called Cornelius was imprisoned in the gatehouse.  He was so attractive
that his gaolers, theTrenchards, and their circle (including Walter
Ralegh) would dispute with him amiably and they became friends.  But
they couldn't save him from being tried in Dorchester, condemned,
hanged, drawn and quartered.  It is said that his footsteps can still
be heard climbing to his room in the gatehouse.

In 1506 the Archduke of Austria and his Spanish bride were forced by
storms to put in at Weymouth and were taken to Wolfeton to await better
weather.  Neither the visitors nor the Trenchards could speak each
other's language, but luckily John Trenchard had a cousin, John
Russell, who knew Spanish and came over to interpret, making himself so
useful that, when the Archduke and princess went to visit Henry VII at
Windsor, he went with them.  From this royal meeting was founded

November 1997 in the House of Russell and the Dukedom of Bedford.  It
makes a change from the more usual founding of great dynasties by
illicit encounters between the sheets.

MONDAY, 3RD NOVEMBER

This is the month, in 1949, when I began my working career in the
Health Service, having answered an advertisement, I think in the

Evening Standard, for clerical assistants in the newly formed service.
I applied to Paddington Hospital Management Committee in the Harrow
Road, a choice which now seems to me highly eccentric, was duly short
listed and presented myself for interview at the group's headquarters
next door to what was then Paddington General Hospital.  I was one of a
large group of aspirants.  It was apparent that the administrators of
the highly diverse hospitals and outpatient clinics, which had been
somewhat illogically grouped together, had been asked to submit
requests for additional staff and that what was being held was a kind
of labour market.  I found favour with Mrs.--or it may have been
Miss--McBain who ran the London Skin Hospital in Fitzroy Square.  She
was an intimidating woman, grey-haired, stocky and with the face of an
angry Pekinese, and I think she rather relished the effect her gruff,
no-nonsense manner had on the male members of the Hospital Management
Committee.

The London Skin Hospital was one of the many small specialist hospitals
which abounded at that time, supported by payments from the patients
and by voluntary help and subscriptions, treating a faithful band of
patients who seemed neither to expect to get better, nor to much resent
the fact that they appeared weekly for some years.  My duties were
simple.  Patients attending for the first time were issued with
appointment cards and numbers.  A numerical filing system had to be
instituted, and reports of the number of patients attending submitted,
I think monthly, to Group Headquarters.  I would make appointments when
the patients rang up, get out the records and have them ready for the
dermatologist when he or she arrived.  Making the appointments merely
meant adding the patient's name to the clinic.  The Skin Hospital
believed firmly in a policy of first-come, first-served, and indeed
this was generally acceptable to the patients.

The staff, other than the medical staff, consisted of Mrs.  McBain,
Sister Ewell, a devout High Anglican, Mrs.  Clayton, a highly efficient
pharmacist, and the porter, referred to as Reid, who had, I gathered,
more or less run the hospital singlehandedly during the war years,
having been fortunate enough to be at school at a time when literacy
and numeracy were assiduously taught.  I would arrive promptly at nine,
don my white coat and Mrs.  McBain would arrive some hours later on a
convenient train from Have where she lived.  I had a feeling that my
job was not strictly necessary or, at least, could have been done by
existing staff, but there was a general feeling of optimism, of public
money liberally available, and a sense that people, no longer working
for a charity, need not overexert themselves.  But the staff at the
London Skin Hospital were fiercely anti-National Health Service, seeing
it as the triumph of state bureaucracy over personal charitable
service.  Mrs.  McBain would pretend not to recognize patients: "It's
no good saying you've been coming here for years, Mrs.  Collins. You're
just a number to us now."  I liked Mrs.  McBain, who had, like many
women of forbidding appearance, a charitable heart and who, I suspect,
liked me, since otherwise I should have been returned to Paddington
Group Headquarters with scant ceremony.

Although the small staff of the London Skin Hospital were
unenthusiastic about the Health Service, most of us welcomed it
unreservedly.

The assurance that medical treatment, including hospital care, would be
free at the time of need lifted a huge weight of anxiety from many
shoulders.

It did from mine.  I could remember when my mother suffered from renal
colic due to stones in the kidney.  I must have been nine or ten at the
time.  Because it cost money to visit or call in the doctor, she went
on enduring spasms of atrocious agony until she finally collapsed in
the butcher's shop and was taken by ambulance to Shrewsbury Hospital.
It was good to know that this need not happen to anyone ever again.

But we were all surprisingly overoptimistic.  Members of Parliament
admitted that the initial cost of the service might be high, but said
that the annual expenditure would decrease as people were treated for
long-standing conditions, and received their free wigs, dentures and
appliances.

After that the free service would ensure that the nation became
healthier year by year.  No one then could have believed that medical
science and technology would make it possible to transplant kidneys and
hearts, or to overcome infertility by fertilizing the ovum outside the
woman's body.  No one could foresee the onset of new diseases such as

November 1997 113

AIDS.  On looking back it seems strange that we took no account of an
ageing population and the demands that an increasing population of the
over-seventies would make on a free service.

In addition to filing and getting out records, I was responsible for
the stamp book.  All letters sent were entered in the ledger by name
and I was supposed to reconcile on a daily basis the total of stamps
left with letters sent, a task which I found tedious and accordingly
neglected.  As the weeks passed it seemed even more difficult to tackle
it, and when the auditors unexpectedly arrived, as is the wont of
auditors, they seized on the book in triumph and bore it down to their
basement office with evident satisfaction.  Some hours later, they
arrived to admit with reluctance that the stamp book was correct to the
last stamp, while pointing out that it was deplorable that it hadn't
been reconciled daily.  I said smugly that I had seen no reason for
that chore since I knew the book was accurate.  Accuracy to the last
penny can only have been a matter of the purest luck.  I did tot up the
book daily thereafter but never again succeeded in getting it right.

My record unsullied by financial misdemeanour, I applied for promotion
to Grade C at Group Headquarters.  The job was that of Committee Clerk,
which meant sitting in at the meetings, taking a record of what was
said, writing the minutes and later collating all the papers and
sending them out to members of the House Committees, who oversaw the
individual hospitals, to the subcommittees of the Hospital Management
Committee and to the Management Committee itself.  I never managed to
learn shorthand but devised my own quick way of writing and luckily
found I had a good memory for speech so that the job wasn't over
demanding

It was about this time that I began to realize that Connor, who had
returned mentally ill from overseas service, might never be well again
and that I might have to support the family indefinitely.  I was then
living with my parents-in-law at Ilford, Essex, who provided unfailing
support and, until they retired to Suffolk, a loving and stable home
for Clare and Jane.  I was going to need, not a job, but a career.  I
began going to evening classes at the City of London College in
Moorgate to study for a diploma in hospital administration.  Without it
any further progress would be impossible.  A small group of us would go
to the College together after work, eating a light supper in the
canteen, usually of soft roes on toast, before the classes began.  The
syllabus covered hospital supplies, building and planning, personnel
management, bookkeeping and

law, the latter for me being by far the most interesting.  We were
taught by a vivacious, rotund and obviously excellent lawyer called
Schmitov, I imagine originally a refugee, with a penchant for the
dramatic.  This meant that he acted out all the cases: pretending to
travel in a cab round Regent's Park for immoral purposes, thus
vitiating the contract between him and the driver, or purchasing a
desirable ball gown from a West End store and lying to the assistant
about his age, illustrating the interesting legal point whereby a ball
gown could not in law be regarded as a necessity.

I found the bookkeeping the most difficult--indeed, at first totally
incomprehensible.  It seemed to me that all transactions were being
entered on the wrong side of the ledger.  We were taught by an Irishman
with a heavy accent who, early ignoring me as a hopeless case, would
repeatedly say, "Yer have to learn the teery, boys."  Alas, "the teery"
perpetually eluded me.  But I did eventually pass the final examination
with honours, gaining the regional prize.  Without this I doubt whether
I would have gained my next promotion, which was to replace the head of
the committee section when he, too, was transferred to higher things. I
was now beginning to earn the kind of salary which might mean I could
support the family without help from my parents-in-law.  The next move
at one grade higher was to the North West Metropolitan Regional
Hospital Board and its offices opposite Paddington Station, where I
remained until 1968.

Now that there is so much concern with waiting lists, treatment
priorities and the rationing of limited resources, it is easy to forget
that not all demands could be met in those heady early years of the
service.  One of the greatest problems facing the country after the war
was tuberculosis.

Paddington Hospital actually had huts in the hospital grounds where the
TB patients were nursed, inhaling the not very salubrious air of the
Harrow Road.  There was the TB waiting list for admission to sanatoria,
and another for the young chronic sick, with illnesses such as
disseminated sclerosis, who only too often had to be nursed in
long-stay geriatric wards.  My section was responsible for the latter
waiting list and I was interested in how human beings differ in their
response to chronic illness.  There were families in which a wife or a
husband was coping with an almost intolerable burden of care and yet
could barely contemplate the thought that the partner might have to
leave home and be institutionalized.

I remember another case in which a wife was battering on the doors of
the Regional Board almost as soon as the diagnosis was made,

November 1997 115

complaining bitterly that her husband could no longer get to the
lavatory and had to use a bottle in the presence of the children.  It
was deeply depressing to contemplate a family in which a disabled
father was made to feel ashamed because he couldn't get unaided to the
lavatory.  The section of which I was head was responsible for a
variety of duties in addition to the young chronic sick waiting list:
the compilation of the regional statistics based on returns made by
each hospital, the mental health service and legal actions against the
Regional Hospital Board, which were handled by an outside firm of
solicitors.

By the time I went to the North West Metropolitan Regional Hospital
Board, my father-in-law had retired from general practice in Ilford,
and he and my mother-in-law moved to a village outside Halesworth in
Suffolk.  The house we shared in Ilford was sold and I had to find a
new home for the four of us.  I thought it would be pleasant to live in
Richmond, but taking a day off to reconnoitre I was told by all the
house agents I visited that even a small house or flat in this
desirable borough couldn't be purchased under 4,000.  So on their
advice I took a bus to Kingston-on-Thames and there found a small
semi-detached Victorian cottage in Richmond Park Road for just over
half that sum.  It is almost unbelievable now to think that a house
could be bought so cheaply.  The journey from Kingston-on-Thames to
London was slow, but it was a delight to be so close to the park.

It was while we lived at Kingston-on-Thames that my elder daughter,
Clare, married and moved with her husband, Lyn, to America, where Lyn
had been offered a job in Huntsville, Alabama, on the space
programme.

She did not see her father again.  Connor died at home on 5th August
1964, aged forty-four years.  While he was alive I hadn't felt it
possible to change my job.  He would periodically discharge himself
from hospital, sometimes at very short notice, and I never knew quite
what I would have to face when I returned home from the office.  It was
not a propitious time to look for promotion or for a new job, which
would only impose additional strain.  But now I felt the strong need to
look for a change of direction.  I saw an advertisement, I think in The
Times, inviting applications for the grade of Principal in the Home
Civil Service.

I sent for particulars, only to receive a reply saying that my
educational qualifications were nowhere near the standard required. The
following year the advertisement appeared again, but was differently
worded.  Now, those applicants who hadn't a good honours degree could
take a written examination followed by a series of interviews.  I
applied again and was successful, coming third in the country on the
final list.

This wasn't quite as impressive as it appears.  Many of the questions
covered the kind of work I had been doing in the Health Service,
writing reports, sitting in committees, replying to letters of
complaint.  I was lucky, too, in finding that the intelligence test was
one based on a sequence of geometric shapes, the only kind with which I
have never had difficulty.  My place on the list of successful
candidates gave me, if not a choice of departments, at least a say in
where I should be posted and I asked for either the Home Office or the
Department of Education.  On 1st March 1968 I entered the Home Office
as a Principal* and began what was probably the most interesting and
happiest part of my working life.

TUESDAY, 4TH NOVEMBER

To Edinburgh yesterday afternoon by air with Joanna Mackle, a director
of Faber, for a talk in the Assembly Rooms followed by a signing.
Afterwards we went to dinner with my grandson James--reading politics
at Edinburgh University--in his flat in Henderson Row.  James and his
girlfriend have made the flat strongly individual with bold primary
colours on the walls throughout, the paint applied with more enthusiasm
than finesse.  Like his father he is an excellent cook and we had
rabbit in a curry sauce with salad and a lemon cake to follow.  His
aunt Mona and her husband were also in the party and we argued amiably,
if forcefully, about education, about which she knows a great deal and
I considerably less.

After the Assembly Rooms talk I was asked the question which comes up
frequently during question-and-answer sessions: Do I draw my characters
from real life?  I am not surprised that this is a popular question.

Characterization is at the heart of a novel and people are always
intrigued about the novelist's method of creating fictional men and
women who live as vividly in the imagination as real people.  The
creation of characters is, I suspect, as mysterious to many novelists
as it is to

The Principal grade is the first officer grade of the Civil Service,
Candidates are usually chosen from among new college graduates.

November 1997 117

their readers.  I usually reply that I don't draw characters directly
from real life and then explain that, by this, I mean I don't take
someone I know and, after making a few judicious alterations to height,
age, appearance or occupation, put the essentials of that person into a
novel.

But I go on to admit that to state that characters are not drawn from
life is to be disingenuous.  All characterization comes from life;
where else can it have its origin?

Some writers make no apology for drawing directly from people they
know.  A name can be put to almost every C. P. Snow character, as it
can to the most successful characters of Nancy Mitford.  But for most
of us the creation of character is rather more complicated.

Dickens drew directly from life.  Indeed, in a letter to a Mr.  Haines
in 1837 he stated that he needed a magistrate for his next number of
Oliver Twist and, having cast about for "a magistrate whose harshness
and insolence would render him a fit subject to be shown up," stumbled
upon Mr.  Laing of Hatton Garden.  He knew the man's character
perfectly well but wanted to describe his personal appearance and
therefore wondered whether he might be smuggled into the Hatton Garden
office for a few minutes under Mr.  Haines's auspices.  I suspect that,
in today's world, Dickens would be at constant risk of an action for
libel.  Similarly, he responded to a complaint from Leigh Hunt that he
had been portrayed as Harold Skimpole in Bleak House by apologizing for
Leigh Hunt's pain, but excused himself by saying that when he felt he
was getting too close to reality, he stopped himself.  Besides, he did
not fancy that Leigh Hunt would ever recognize himself.  He ended:
"Under similar disguises my own mother and father are in my books, and
you might as well see your likeness in Micawber."

Some novelists have taken pains to emphasize that they don't draw
directly from life, almost as if they find the accusation demeaning.
Charlotte Bronte, writing to Ellen Nussey in 1849, protested that she
was not to suppose any of the characters in Shirley was intended as a
literal portrait.

"It would not suit the rules of art, nor of my own feelings, to write
in that style.  We only suffer reality to suggest, never to dictate."
This is a subtle but, I think, a valid distinction.  George Eliot, in a
letter ten years later, claimed that there was "not a single portrait
in Adam Bede .. . The whole course of the story, the descriptions of
scenery and houses, the characters and dialogue, everything is a
combination from widely sundered elements of experience."  Gustave
Flaubert wrote that there was nothing true in Madame Bovary.

"It is a story of pure invention: I have put none of my own feelings
into it, nor anything of my own life.  The illusion, on the contrary
(if there is any), comes from the very objectivity of the work."  But
it is difficult to believe that Flaubert had not at some time
encountered a Madame Bovary or someone very like her.

Certainly I find it difficult to believe that any successful fictional
character has been created which did not catch the first flicker of
life from the burning coal of a living person.  That person may very
well, of course, be the author himself, and frequently is.  We may not
always have access to the pain, joy, disgust, embarrassment, remorse of
other people--how can we have?--but our own emotions, our own pains and
joys, are always available to us.  These, remembered, and relived,
sometimes with discomfort, and filtered through the imagination become
the raw stuff of fiction.

Once the main emotive thrust is established--the essentials of
character, the formative experiences of childhood and the vicissitudes
of adult life--then, for me, a character takes root in my mind and is
able to grow and develop.  But the character never really comes alive
until I begin writing.  Then it feels to me as if the character and his
whole story already exist in some limbo of my imagination and that what
I am doing is getting in touch with a living person and putting his
story down in black and white, a process less of creation than of
revelation.  And during the writing the character will reveal himself
or herself more clearly, will display unexpected quirks of personality
and will sometimes act in a way I neither planned nor expected.  For in
my kind of fiction, of course, no character can completely escape his
author.  I can't have a murderer deciding that he would prefer to be an
innocent suspect.  When I am asked if my characters do occasionally
take control, I have to reply that their freedom is necessarily
limited, but because they change and develop as the manuscript
lengthens, I never get exactly the novel I was so carefully planning.

Real people reveal themselves and are revealed by what they do, what
they say, what they think and by what other people say and think about
them.  So it is with characters in fiction.  I was interested when I
read--I can't remember where--how Evelyn Waugh responded to a reader
who pointed out that he never describes what his characters are
thinking.  He said, "I don't know what they're thinking, I only know
what they do."

This is the opposite of the stream-of-consciousness revelation of
character, the Molly Bloom soliloquy in Ulysses being one of the best
examples.

Character can also be revealed through setting, through the personal

November 1997 119

choice of what to wear, the outward appearance we present to the world,
the objects with which we choose to surround ourselves.  It is possible
in a novel to describe a room, books, pictures, ornaments, or a bare
uncluttered, functional space and immediately bring the owner to life,
an example of the interdependence of all the elements in a novel.  We
are always two people: the essential self, perhaps never fully known,
and the carefully constructed carapace which protects that self and
becomes the person we present to the world.

For me, one of the fascinations of detective fiction is the exploration
of character under the revealing trauma of a murder enquiry.  Murder is
the unique crime, the only one for which we can never make reparation
to the victim.  Murder destroys privacy, both of the living and of the
dead.  It forces us to confront what we are and what we are capable of
being.  No wonder it has fascinated writers and readers since Cain
murdered Abel.

WEDNESDAY, 5TH NOVEMBER

To lunch at Penguin's offices off Kensington High Street, where we
discussed plans for the promotion of the mass-market edition of A
Certain Justice.  Then at 4:30 Michele Buck and Tim Vaughan from Anglia
(now United Film and Television Productions) called to talk about the
television version of the book.

It was on this day, 5th November, in 1989, when I first went to
Czechoslovakia for a nine-day visit on behalf of the British Council,
of which I was a member from 1988 to 1993.  It was my first excursion
behind the Iron Curtain except for a day's visit to East Berlin when I
was in Berlin in 1986, again for the British Council.  The hotel in
Prague was comfortable and modernized, but the service surly.  I had a
translator constantly with me and on the first morning was due to meet
a journalist in the foyer of the hotel.  Before she arrived, my
translator suggested we should have coffee at the bar.  So we perched
on two high stools where my interviewer eventually joined us.  I
offered her coffee and suggested that we should now take our cups to
the comfortable chairs around one of the low tables, since it was
hardly practicable to conduct an interview while seated in a line at
the bar.

My translator at once demurred.

"It is not allowed," she said.

"Coffee is at the bar only."  I said that I, as a guest of the hotel,
had paid for the coffee and could see no reason why we should not drink
it at one of the tables.  I was perfectly prepared to carry the cups
back to the bar afterwards.  So we went to the table but my translator
was obviously not at ease.  A few minutes later she broke off her
translation to say, "You are right.  You are a guest in this hotel. Why
can't we have coffee at this table?"  I replied that she should stay
close to my side, as she intended, and by the end of my visit would no
doubt be as bloody-minded as a Briton.

Everywhere I sensed this sensitivity to what was or was not allowed.

A small television crew with one camera came to make a film about me,
part of which was shot outside the Cathedral.  It was bitterly cold and
afterwards I suggested that they should come back with me to the hotel
for coffee or a drink.  Only the director spoke English and he said
that this would not be possible.  The hotel was for rich foreigners and
those who had foreign exchange.  I persuaded them to come back and I
think they enjoyed the coffee, but they were not at ease.

Everywhere there was a sense of impending change.  The roads were lined
with the tinny-looking cars of East Germans who had come over the
border.  The dominoes were tumbling and although I saw on every wall,
particularly in the schools where I spoke, a large framed photograph of
the President, Gustav Husak, I felt I was not the only person present
who was wondering how long it would hang there.

The school visits were disappointing.  The young people sat in
attentive silence and all, as far as I could judge, seemed interested
in what I told them about the craft of the detective story and what was
happening in English literature.  But at question time they were
absolutely silent.

This was in such marked contrast from my experience of lively,
questioning young audiences in Germany, Italy or Spain, let alone
English speaking countries, that I asked the reason.  The staff said
pupils were not encouraged ever to question what they had been told and
a period of questions and discussion would be alien to their culture.

I spent one evening speaking to an officially recognized organization
of writers.  They told me that the state was generous to writers and
that there was a beautiful residential centre in which they could stay
without payment when writing their books.  I asked whether a Czech
whose books were critical of the government would also be able to enjoy
this privilege.  There was a silence and then one of the writers
replied no.  The

November 1997 121

evening was curious, the air heavy with questions unasked and the
knowledge that life was about to change fundamentally and perhaps in
directions no one could foresee.

I was driven to Slovakia by a British Council driver through a
landscape of fir trees which reminded me of the novels of John le
Carre, and of an early scene from the BBC production of Tinker, Tailor,
Soldier, Spy where the British agent is betrayed and shot.  I almost
expected to hear the crackle of gunfire and see the solitary figure
dodging among the trees.

We stopped on the way for coffee and the driver spoke about communism
and the acknowledgement of and apology for past mistakes recently made
in Russia.  Looking across the table I saw that he was close to tears.
He broke out vehemently: "Thousands were killed, thousands have no
jobs, no hope, thousands are in prison.  And now they say, "Was a
mistake'!"

When I lived in Cambridge in the early days of the war I met a
Czechoslovak airman and we would go dancing together on Saturday nights
at the pretentiously named McGrath Ballroom, one of the regular
Cambridge haunts of air crews based on airfields near the city.  He was
tall and exceptionally good-looking, but the relationship, which never
really grew beyond a romantic friendship, was hampered because we could
only communicate in rather poor French.  He gave me a very beautiful
cameo ring which, to my lasting regret, I lost sometime during the war.
He had a passionate hatred of Germans.  When I enquired whether he was
a bomber or a fighter pilot, he growled, "]e suis chasseur!," as if it
were a battle cry.  This vehemence was in contrast to the British
fighter pilots I knew who took a matter-of-fact attitude to the task in
hand, showing little hatred of the enemy with whom they shared the same
dangerous skies.  We were due to meet at the ballroom in January 1941
but my Czech didn't arrive, and I knew none of his fellow Czech pilots
from whom I could enquire.

When I was in Prague my publishers told me that the Czechs who had
fought for the allies and survived were subsequently ostracized.
Professional men lost their jobs and most were denied civil liberties.
But he said that the climate was now changing and that his firm had
produced a book with pictures and records of those who had flown in the
Free Czech Air Force.  He gave me a copy, and I recognized my
Czechoslovak pilot.  There was a cross and a date in January 1941
beside his name, confirming what I already knew.

THURSDAY, 6TH NOVEMBER

This is the time of year when all the main literary editors of the
broad sheets telephone and ask what books I have most enjoyed during
the year.  It is a curious exercise affording some readers the chance
to give a plug to their friends while others choose extraordinarily
erudite volumes which it is hard to believe they have actually read for
pleasure.

It has been a particularly good year for biographies, which I now read
and enjoy far more than fiction.  I still have much reading pleasure in
store, but, of those I have finished, I greatly enjoyed and have named
Claire Tomalin's sensitive and elegantly written Jane Austen: A Life,
and Jenny Uglow's Hogarth: A Life and a World, an absorbing study of a
great artist and his age.  Iain Pears's un memorably named An Instance
of the Fingerpost is a fictional tour de force set in Oxford in the
1660s which combines erudition with mystery.  But the novel I most
admired this year is Enduring Love by Ian McE wan the brilliant first
chapter alone should have assured it a place on the Booker shortlist.
It doesn't altogether fulfill this promise and it isn't a comfortable
novel, but it would be interesting to know why the judges rejected
it.

THURSDAY, I3TH NOVEMBER

I am writing this in my room at the Waldorf Astoria at the end of the

QE2 cruise which began on Friday, yth November.  This was my third trip
as a guest lecturer and by far the most enjoyable.  The QE2 is a ship
which needs getting used to; at first too much like a floating hotel to
provide what I love, a sense of being at sea.  But now I know my way
around and have begun to understand the affection which regular
travellers obviously feel.  Some of them cross the Atlantic by no other
way, taking the same cabin, meeting the same people, and speaking
knowledgeably about their favourite captains.

This time I persuaded Rosemary to come with me, the perfect travel
November 1997 123

ling companion since she is invariably good-humoured, relishes the
variety, challenge and drollery of new experience and can be relied
upon to be stalwart in an emergency.  Her broken wrist is still in
plaster, and the official photograph taken of us coming aboard has
caught her, arm in sling, with a momentary look of submissive
depression, with me at her side, twice as large, ruddy-faced and
beaming.  The only appropriate caption would be "Murderess and her
victim come aboard!"

The trip was memorable for the storm which began on Saturday.  We were
warned that the weather would worsen, and it did so spectacularly.

Rosemary and I took our sea-sickness pills, which were effective, but a
row of cabins had their "Do not disturb" signs on the doors all day,
and the Queen's Grill, where we had our table, had more empty places
than passengers.  One of the waiters told me that a member of the crew
in their quarters had become extremely unpopular by showing The
Poseidon Adventure on video.  It was difficult at times to keep upright
and the captain broadcast to us that the open deck was prohibited.
Before this announcement Rosemary and I, desperate for sea air, had
tried to force open one of the doors on the boat deck, but immediately
had to clutch each other to avoid being hurled across the deck.

But it was worth putting up with inconvenience to see the Atlantic in a
storm.  As far as we could see the ocean had solidified and become a
heaving mountain range of granite and rock, violently restless and yet
intimidatingly dense and impervious.  As far as the horizon the great
grey ridges reared themselves up, valleys widened and became chasms,
and volcano after volcano rose with majestic slowness to erupt, not
with bursts of fire, but with explosions of spume.  Outside our cabin
window we watched the ocean rising in shining curves of grey mottled
with white which disintegrated with a sound like gunfire and flung
spray against the glass.  On Saturday night a particularly large wave
must have shaken the ship, the sound something between a crack and an
explosion.  Our clothes were wrenched from the hangers and flung across
the floor while bottles and glasses skidded and broke, and the chairs
spun and crashed against the cabin wall.  It was extraordinary to think
that a ship the size of the QE2, 70,000 tons in weight, thirteen
storeys high and a half-mile walk round the decks, could be so
shaken.

But by Sunday night the storm had eased and on Monday midday a fitful
sun was shining on a calm purple-blue ocean and we were able to sit and
read on deck.  When the QEz finally goes out of service, I wonder

how many regular sea crossings of the Atlantic there will be and how
many passengers will be able to experience the tumultuous power of the
Atlantic in a gale.

We found we were to share our table, always at first a depressing
prospect.  But the two passengers--Donald and Renee Bain--were
delightful, entertaining and companionable Americans.  Donald, among
his varied literary achievements--he is the author of the Murder, She
Wrote series--writes books for celebrities who want to be published
authors without the actual bother of having to write themselves.  He
was extremely discreet about his clients, but I can see the attraction.
The book sells on the celebrity's name and the writer collects 50
percent of the royalties.  But it is not without its disadvantages,
particularly when the celebrity draws a languid hand across his or her
brow and complains that the emotional stress of creative writing, not
to mention the publicity, is becoming too much.  Under Don's guidance I
threw craps in the casino, the first time I have ever gambled.  I
limited myself to $100 and left the table with $198.  Rosemary played
the one-armed bandits until I confiscated all her quarters.

The arrival in New York down the Hudson was as spectacular as ever.

One should always arrive in great cities by sea or river.  As we
managed our own luggage we were able to disembark early and, despite
pouring rain, set off to check in at the Waldorf Astoria and then to
the Frick and the Metropolitan Museum.  Rosemary will have a day in New
York before flying back to London tomorrow, while I go on to a Canadian
tour.

FRIDAY, 21ST NOVEMBER

It is 9:30 p.m. and I am seated on Air Canada flight 96 for London
Heathrow after a successful, if tiring, Canadian tour.

On Friday I4th I arrived very late in Toronto and was met by Pat
Cairns, one of the publicity directors, and taken to the Four Seasons
Hotel.  Next day, Saturday, my Canadian publisher, Louise Dennys, gave
a celebration party at her Toronto apartment.  Louise is a remarkable
woman, beautiful, intelligent and kind, and I value her both as my
Canadian publisher and as a friend.  The party was due to last for two
hours, but went on considerably longer and I was introduced in swift

November 1997 125

succession to one Toronto celebrity after another.  Although I was
comfortably seated while this went on, the noise level and the effort
of responding to each new personality were inevitably tiring.

At the dinner afterwards, one of the guests, an eminent woman lawyer,
inveighed passionately against the dominance of the legal profession in
England by male barristers and the prejudice and hostility shown to
women at the Bar.  She instanced Helena Kennedy and the unfairness with
which, she alleged, this particular lawyer had had to contend.  I was
tempted to point out that the brilliant Helena Kennedy had, in the end,
done rather well for herself.  I am always irritated by criticism of
England when I am abroad and I tried to point out that women were
entering the law in greater numbers and that, although I obviously had
no personal knowledge, I believed that things were improving.  However,
as the diatribe continued, I found myself saying tartly that I was
becoming tired of women presenting themselves as victims.

I have been out of the regular working world now for so long that I
have to resist the temptation to take lightly difficulties which other
women may be experiencing in their professional lives.  During my
career in the Health Service and Civil Service I certainly worked with
a few men who disliked women, which was disagreeable enough, and
occasionally with some who disliked me, which was even less
agreeable.

But I cannot in honesty say that, once in post, I ever experienced real
discrimination.  Admittedly when I went before appointing committees in
the National Health Service to gain promotion, I accepted that I would
have to be not only better qualified than the male candidates, but
considerably better qualified.  This can hardly be regarded as equality
of opportunity.  The discrimination was partly because hospital
administration was seen primarily as a male career if only to balance
the considerable power that matrons then exercised in the hospital
world.  In the Home Office I experienced no trace of discrimination,
but I accept from what is told to me that in some professions it does
exist and that sexual discrimination and harassment can't be dismissed
as the obsessive preoccupation of extreme feminists.  But it is
remarkable how much has been achieved for women during my lifetime.
When I was a child I can't remember ever coming into contact with any
professional women who were not either nurses or schoolteachers.
Obviously there were women doctors, dentists, solicitors, but I never
met them.

The career opportunities available to us grammar school girls in the
19305 were limited, particularly those of us who had no chance of
going

on to university.  I can recall a sentence from the Cambridge High
School prospectus which, after pointing out that girls could enter the
sixth form and be prepared for teacher training college or could take a
secretarial course, added: "The school thus prepares pupils either for
a career or for the ordinary pursuits of womanhood."  The ordinary
pursuits of womanhood consisted of finding a husband, bearing his
children, looking after the home and, if money and leisure afforded,
undertaking voluntary work in the community.  No girl I knew at school
went on to a university although a number became teachers.

When I entered the Health Service in 1949 I was paid less than a man on
the same grade doing comparable work simply because I was a woman.
Then, after my father-in-law retired and I had to find a home for
myself, my husband and the children, I was told that a mortgage would
not be granted without my husband's signature.  Eventually I was able
to persuade the mortgage company of the impracticability of this since
Connor was unable to earn and spent most of his time in hospitals, but
it was a long struggle.

But all the benefits and advantages we women have won during my
lifetime have their compensating disadvantages.  Professional women
with small children certainly work harder and under greater stress
today than ever I experienced.  I was, of course, fortunate in living
with my parents-in-law so that, although I had to work, my daughters
were assured of devoted and reliable daily care.  The relationship
between the sexes is more fraught with uncertainty and anxiety than
when I was a girl.  Girls growing up today have privileges and
opportunities which would have seemed unbelievable to that
fourteen-year-old schoolgirl before the war, but I do not think that
their lives are necessarily easier and I do not envy them.

Despite the arguments at dinner, Friday was a happy day.  It is always
a delight to see Louise and her husband Ric Young, who has more energy
than any other man I know.  It is impossible to dine in a restaurant
with him without at least half the staff and three-quarters of the
other diners coming over to greet him and Louise, and to chat.

Monday iyth November was the real beginning of the tour, with a
continuous programme of radio and television in the morning and
afternoon, and a reading at Trinity Church followed by a book-signing.
After this, a Canadian friend, Vern Heinrich, collected me and took me
for a quiet dinner to his and his wife's Toronto home.  It was good to
sit and eat in quiet comfort away from the questioning voices.

November 1997 127

The next morning I flew Air Canada to Montreal for the usual schedule
of television, radio and newsprint events, followed by dinner and a
talk with two other writers at the Ritz Carlton Hotel.  I went to bed
early to be up in good time for the 8:40 a.m. flight to Ottawa, where
Louise joined me at the Chateau Laurier Hotel.  I was in Ottawa for one
event only, at the National Arts Centre for a talk followed by a
signing.

Kathy Reichs, author of Deja Dead, had read with me in Montreal and was
again part of the event.  She is a highly intelligent, lively and
likeable forensic anthropologist and is being strongly promoted as the
new Patricia Cornwell.  The strength of her novel is the insight it
gives into the scientific procedures of a murder investigation, and
with its gruesomely authentic background, its contemporary heroine, Dr.
Temperance Brennan, an ex-alcoholic, and the interesting setting in
bilingual Montreal, I predict that it will be a bestseller.  The event
was sold out well before the night and Kathy Reichs's talk to the
crowded audience was as fascinating as it was unexpected.  She decided
to talk about her work, not her novel, and image after gaudy image of
mutilated and decomposed bodies was thrown up on the screen; one of
particular horror to the squeamish showed a dead male with his hands
hacked off seeming to hold out the bloodstained stumps in piteous
entreaty.  The audience, composed predominantly of middle-aged women,
seemed totally un flustered by this realism, but the audience for a
concert in another part of the Arts Centre, enjoying an opportune
interval, pressed their faces to the glass partition in some wonder at
the strong stomachs of the mystery book-buying public.

Listening to Kathy Reichs giving her presentation I pondered on the
difference between the books written by women crime writers in the
Golden Age and women writing today.  Dorothy L. Sayers, Ngaio Marsh,
Margery Allingham, all created gentlemanly detectives operating
predominantly in a middle-class or upper-class world: Lord Peter
Wimsey, son of a duke; Roderick Alleyn, son of a baronet; Albert
Campion of unspecified but aristocratic lineage.  This emphasis on
gentility wasn't entirely snobbish.  The detective story is popular
entertainment and readers in the 19305 preferred their heroes to be at
least their social equal and to demonstrate qualities which were then
regarded as essential for the hero: courage, reticence, intelligence
and good manners.  There was small regard for credibility, particularly
in the method of murder.  The relations between the police and
omni-talented private eye were unrealistic.

Forensic and police details were usually inaccurate or omitted.

There was an avoidance of violence, sometimes indeed an absence of
blood, and the villain invariably received his or her just deserts
without too much regard for psychological subtleties.

The 19305 were years of remarkable freedom from domestic crime and
although there were areas of the inner cities which must have been as
violent as they are today, pictures of social disruption were not being
brought daily into our drawing-rooms by television.  It was therefore
possible to live in a small country town or village and feel almost
entirely secure.  Reading the detective stories of the 19305 brings the
decades between the wars vividly to life.  What we find in these
essentially gentle mysteries is an ordered society in which virtue is
regarded as normal, crime an aberration, and in which there is small
sympathy for the criminal.

It is accepted, although seldom stated, that murderers, when convicted,
will hang.  Agatha Christie, arch-purveyor of cosy reassurance, is
careful not to emphasize this fact, but Dorothy L. Sayers in Busman's
Honeymoon actually has the temerity to confront Lord Peter Wimsey with
the logical end to his detective activities, when he crouches weeping
in his wife's arms on the morning when Frank Crutchley is executed.

I couldn't help feeling when I first read the novel that Lord Peter was
somewhat oversensitive; no one after all had forced him to become a
detective.

One of the criticisms made today of the 19305 detective story is that
it pandered to the snobbery of the middle class.  Certainly I can't
think of a single crime novel of the 19305 in which a servant or member
of the working class is either the murderer or plays a major part in
the story.

It is almost as if the working class were there to feed the detective
with useful scraps of information, provide comic relief, and
occasionally be sacrificed as an additional, but seldom the main,
victim.  This uncritical acceptance of the division of class runs
through virtually all the detective stories of the 19305, although it
is perhaps strongest in Dorothy L. Sayers and Ngaio Marsh.  But if the
detective story was snobbish by present day standards, so was virtually
all popular entertainment including commercial drama, as I know from
the series of Plays of the Year on my bookshelf.  Here the name of a
cook or house parlour-maid in the cast list is a guarantee that the
playwright is aiming to inject a leaven of domestic humour.

Dorothy L. Sayers, among much in her novels that is incredible, or
over-romanticized, does deal realistically with the 19305 problem of
the superfluous women, not only the pathetic spinsters in their
boarding

November 1997 129

houses and cheap hotels, but women with intelligence, initiative, and
often with education, for whom society offered no real intellectual
outlet.

I can't think of a single detective story written by a woman in the
19305 which features a woman lawyer, a woman doctor, a woman
politician, or indeed a woman in any real position of political or
commercial power.

In her biography of Margery Allingham, Julie Thorogood states that the
fashion historian James Laver, a correspondent of the novelist,
described the era between the wars as "hectic, frivolous, frustrated,
puzzled, frantic," and Margery Allingham herself said, "Whatever
happens, never go pretending that things were going well before the
war.  Never deceive yourself that you could not foresee a dead end."
They were not, of course, going well, but in general the detective
story was concerned to provide diversion from the ills of society, not
to dwell on them or propose a solution.  In Christie, for example,
there is no real horror, no real blood or grief; indeed, even the
murders are sanitized.  And we know at the end that the corpse will
pick itself up, shake itself down, and normality will be restored to
Mayhem Parva, the fly-in-amber village, which, despite its
above-average homicide rate, never really loses its peace or
innocence.

The heroes created by women writing today could hardly be more
different.  Forensic and medical details are invariably accurate and
women make use of their own expertise.  Patricia Cornwell, whose
detective, Dr.  Kay Scarpetta, is a forensic medical examiner, herself
worked in this field; Kathy Reichs is of course a forensic
anthropologist, whilst Sarah Dunant with Hannah Woolf, Sue Grafton with
Kinsey Millhone, Sara Paretsky with V. I. Warshawski, and Joan Smith
with her academic Loretta Lawson have created tough private eyes all
over thirty, independent, highly professional and operating
successfully in a predominantly male world.  None of these fictional
women is a single working mother or a married woman with children,
trying to cope with her job whilst negotiating with a series of au
pairs and torn with guilt about leaving her children.  This is not the
kind of realism which most readers of crime novels want.  Adam
Dalgliesh is similarly unencumbered.  I ruthlessly killed off his wife
in childbirth even before beginning my first novel.

Neither his poetry nor his professional life are inconvenienced by the
pram in the hall.  To that extent, I suppose, we still deal in fantasy,
and it is only the fashion in fantasy which changes.

December

MONDAY, 1ST DECEMBER

It was on this date seven years ago that I learned I was to receive a
life peerage.  I remember that the post was particularly heavy that
morning and I gathered up the letters to open at the kitchen table
while I drank coffee.  The stiff white envelope came from 10 Downing
Street and I opened it with no particular expectations.  When I read
the first line, "I have it in mind on the occasion of the forthcoming
list of New Year Honours to submit your name to the Queen"--I
immediately assumed that my OBE was to be upgraded to CBE.  There was
scarcely time for this thought to take hold before I read the rest of
the letter and learnt that I was to be recommended for a life
peerage.

Looking back now over the past seven years I feel some guilt that I
have taken so little part in the affairs of the House.  I wasn't
appointed as what is commonly known as a working peer, but I did expect
to show my face more regularly than I have.  The problem has been with
my writing life, particularly the public and charitable appearances and
overseas tours, which are arranged months in advance, whereas the
business of the House comes up at very short notice.  Another problem
has been my reluctance to speak without having become a more regular
attender and better conversant with the traditions and procedures of
the House.  But I should be doing more and doing it better.

I made my maiden speech on the subject of literature and the
preservation of the English language.  Nearly all new peers confess
that, whatever experience they may have of public speaking, their
maiden speech in the House of Lords is an ordeal.  There is no reason
why this should be so as the tradition of the House is to be
unfailingly courteous and supportive to the new member, and maiden
speeches, however inadequate, are by custom received with tributes of
praise and congratulations from following speakers.  And so it was with
me.

December 1997 131

And now, if the Government's intention in its manifesto is to be
carried out, the House will change fundamentally and will, indeed,
cease to be the House of Lords.  Although few people would wish to
defend the right of hereditary peers to have a part in the government
of the country merely because of their birthright, to seek to reform
the House by first abolishing the hereditary peers without deciding the
final constitution and form of the second chamber seems to me dangerous
and irresponsible folly.  The first step to reform would surely be to
prohibit any elder son from taking his father's place when the peer
dies, and to exclude from the chamber all those who don't have a record
of regular attendance.

This would enable the work of the House to be carried on while the
long-term future was discussed at leisure.  There should be no hurry
about changing an institution which has served for 700 years.

The proper way is to appoint a Royal Commission and to give them
adequate time in which to take evidence from a wide variety of people
and interests.  The reform of the House is more complex than a
government anxious for quick results is prepared to admit.  Reform of
the second chamber involves considering the relationship between the
two Houses, and between the Westminster Parliament and the legislative
bodies in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.  It is also for
consideration whether the second chamber should have powers in relation
to European legislation.  The Royal Commission would need to consider
whether the Lords should be appointed or elected and, if elected, by
what means and for how long; whether the present system of appointment,
if continued, is sufficiently democratic and open to scrutiny; and
whether it is desirable that the power of a second and revising chamber
should be increased.  If the second chamber is elected or partly
elected, it will, of course, have a democratic legitimacy which it now
lacks, and it could well flex its muscles to be a far more effective
check on the executive.

At present the Lords, only too aware that all members are there by
privilege not by election, are afraid to exercise those powers which
are already theirs.  A more democratically constituted Upper House
would be more powerful and more troublesome to the Government; is this
likely to be acceptable to the Commons?

I am not sure, either, whether we really need a second chamber composed
mainly of professional full-time politicians.  There is something to be
said for the present system whereby men and women with particular
expertise will try to attend and make their contribution when their
subject comes up.  A danger, too, in an elected chamber is that the
House

will lose that sturdy independence which has characterized not only
those on the cross-benches, but peers who have declared a political
allegiance.

And when the hereditary peers go, will there be any point in retaining
life peers?  The ermine, the title, the coat of arms for those who
decide to have one, the induction ceremony, all will become meaningless
flummery if the House has in fact become the equivalent of a senate.

The House as at present constituted may be an anomaly and one difficult
to justify democratically, but it does work effectively and if it is to
be changed, it must be changed for the better and not merely to gratify
the more ignoble impulses of class resentment or envy.  Our present
system of government makes a strong revising chamber essential to the
cause of democracy.  Because of the first-past-the-post voting system,
which does have the advantage of producing strong government, nearly
every government is elected on a minority vote; there are always more
people who didn't want the party in power than those who did.  The
second chamber should have a keen ear to hear their grievances and the
courage and independence to voice their concerns.  No one doubts that
the final authority rests with the elected chamber but it is carrying
hypocrisy too far to pretend that the elected chamber always represents
in every respect the will of the majority of the people.

Whatever happens, the House will be far duller without the hereditary
peers, and I must try to attend more often while it retains some of the
vigour, independence, excitement and breadth of knowledge which
characterizes it at present.  And is it too much to hope that the
reforms will be made in a spirit of dignity, courtesy and generosity?
The hereditary peers have served the country well, some of them with
distinction.

They deserve our thanks before they go.  But then, ours is not a
dignified, courteous or generous-minded age.

WEDNESDAY, 3RD DECEMBER

I arrived last Friday at Grand Cayman, flying from Gatwick to spend a
week with Dick and Mary Francis.  The journey is much easier now that
there are direct flights.  Previously I had to transfer at Miami, a
tedious time-consuming business, since the airport has apparently no
transfer lounge and I had to go through Immigration merely in order to
change

December 1997 133

planes.  This is my second visit and, as before, I stepped out of the
aircraft into warm, sweet-smelling air and saw Mary and Dick waiting
for me under the leafy canopy which leads to the airport building.

Our daily routine is well established.  Dick and Mary's apartment is on
Seven Mile Beach within yards of the warm translucent sea.  In the
morning, before breakfast, Dick and I walk along the firm sand,
splashing through the surf for half a mile in either direction,
returning to take our morning swim with Mary, who gets up later.  Early
in her marriage she had polio very badly, was in an iron lung and
nearly died.  She can't tolerate the English winter, which is the
reason why she and Dick live in Grand Cayman.  After our swim I laze
under the palm trees until it is time for lunch.  The afternoon is
similarly sybaritic and I don't put on shoes or change from shorts and
T-shirt until it is time to go out for a meal.  The restaurants are
varied and good, and I particularly like the Wharf Restaurant, where we
sit under the lights on the pier in warm scented darkness, and wait for
the tarpons to be fed, swirling and leaping as the bucket empties in a
silver stream.

Grand Cayman is one of the few remaining British colonies and the
people are obviously well content with a system which produces security
and prosperity.  I learned something of the history.  Columbus
discovered Grand Cayman on his fourth journey in 1503, apparently by
accident when blown off course on his way to take on water at Dominica.
He named it Tortuga after the turtles for which it was, and remains,
famous.

Francis Drake arrived in 1586.  Because the island is unwatered there
seems to have been no indigenous population and the earliest
inhabitants were pirates, remittance men and escaping slaves.

It is a colony without taxes and since people keep all the money they
earn, there is no need for the equivalent of a welfare state.  It is a
socioeconomic system which could only work in a small and
self-contained community.  Income is derived from a tax on imports and
on every legal document signed in the colony; since Grand Cayman, for
obvious reasons, is one of the world's most flourishing financial
centres, this imposition is lucrative.  I went to a meeting of the
Legislative Assembly.  There are fifteen members elected by districts
and an Executive Council of five elected by the Assembly with the
Governor General and Attorney General as ex officio members.  The
Assembly is modelled on the House of Commons with a Speaker but no
Prime Minister.  The debate I listened to was lively, with the
multiracial members questioning the Customs Officer on the problem of
controlling the traffic in drugs.  Grand Cayman is a con ve

nient staging post for drugs entering or leaving the United States.  I
was intrigued to see that the Minister of Health was called Anthony
Eden.

Grand Cayman is an island with remarkably little crime, which is hardly
surprising since almost everyone is personally known and the only way
of leaving is by boat or air.

I have stayed at a number of British embassies abroad when on my
travels and always there has been high security, often with armed
guards.

Walking along the beach with Dick I saw that the Governor's garden
stretches down to the beach with no fence and a simple notice on a post
stuck into the sand: "Please respect the Governor's privacy."  That
notice seemed to sum up the spirit of the island.

SATURDAY, 6TH DECEMBER

I arrived home in the early afternoon.  Andy was waiting for me at
Gatwick and drove me to Marks & Spencer on my way home to stock up with
food.  Polly-Hodge gave me her usual cool greeting to demonstrate
displeasure at my absence, and then followed me around the house for
the rest of the day.  Everything was in good order.  Joyce, with her
usual efficiency, had sorted the post into matters requiring attention,
those that were urgent and papers for information only.  What on earth
would I do without her?

Next week is going to be exceptionally busy, but I shall think about
that tomorrow.

SUNDAY, 7TH DECEMBER

I awoke after a very good night's sleep with the firm intention of
going to ii o'clock Mass.  I set out with a quarter of an hour to get
to Margaret Street, but neither bus nor taxi appeared and I was
obstinately disinclined to go down into the Underground.  Eventually a
94 appeared, but the journey was slow and it was obvious by the time we
reached Marble Arch that I would be at least twenty minutes late for
the service.  So I went into

December 1997 135

Marks & Spencer instead and bought myself a skirt.  I was rewarded for
this triumph of Mammon over God by leaving my umbrella in the bus.

Waiting for the 94, I was reminded somewhat irrationally of Billy Brown
of London Town, that squat round little man of the war years with his
bowler hat and rolled umbrella invented by some functionary of the
Ministry of Information to demonstrate the perfect citizen.  Billy
Brown never lost his ration card, never travelled unnecessarily and his
blackout was always impeccable, showing no chink of light.  The poster
showed him standing at a bus stop with his left hand raised and read:

"Face the driver, raise your hand / You'll find that he will
understand."

Underneath some wit had written: "Of course he will, the silly cuss /
But will he stop the bloody bus?"

FRIDAY, I2TH DECEMBER

The last few days, all filled with activity, seem to have merged
together.

On Monday at 9 o'clock Faber sent Andy to take me to Queen Square,
where I signed 1,000 copies of the novel between half-past nine and a
quarter past twelve, a feat achieved by setting up a production line of
someone to open the book at the title page and slide it before me and
someone else to close it and pack it.

On Tuesday morning I attended a lunch for the Regent's Park and
Kensington North Conservative Association Women's Group at the Henry
VIII Hotel in Paddington, and spoke afterwards.  I had arranged for
Andy to collect me at 3:15 and take me direct to Buckingham Palace,
where there was a meeting of the Patrons of the Royal Society Project
Science.  The Duke of Edinburgh as usual got through the business
sharply and we then retired to a room overlooking The Mall for tea.
This is served in surprisingly large cups and accompanied by delicately
sized and delicious sandwiches.

We then went to the Royal Society for the President's reception.

Despite my ignorance of science, I love going to the Royal Society,
particularly to look at the documents, the books and the pictures, and
there are always interesting people to meet.  On Tuesday I had a lively
discussion with a young scientist about religious belief.  He said
that, as a Roman Catholic, he had never been troubled by any conflict
between

science and religion; they represented two entirely different modes of
thought.  I said that surely some of the more esoteric doctrines, such
as the physical Assumption of the Virgin Mary, were hard to accept.  I
don't think he did accept it.  He said that religion should be reduced
to its essentials and the extraneous paraphernalia ignored, although
perhaps the word "reduced" isn't really appropriate.

"At heart," he said, "it's really very simple."

On Wednesday morning I was at the British Council to give a short talk
at a lunchtime meeting in aid of the Council's Benevolent Fund.

They had held a poetry competition and I was asked to read the winning
poem.  It is always good to return to the Council to meet old friends
and to hear what is happening in the Literature Department.  One of the
most encouraging things I have learned recently is the success of an
application to the Lottery to cooperate with a publisher in sending a
complete set of Everyman books, not only to every secondary school in
the United Kingdom, but also to all overseas British Council
libraries.

We have in English a language of incomparable beauty, versatility and
richness and a literature, particularly poetry, surely unsurpassed, and
it is extraordinary to me how little we understand of its importance to
this country's reputation overseas.

Yesterday, nth December, I was one of the speakers with Roy Hat tersley
and my American editor, Charles Elliott, at the Oldie lunch at
Simpsons.  It was, as usual, crowded, cheerful, and the food was
excellent, if hardly suitable for oldies counting calories.  Roy
Hattersley spoke entertainingly about what he saw as a deterioration in
public life since the days of Attlee, and Charles was interesting on
the difference between gardening in the United States and in
England--or, in his case, in the Welsh Marches.  We were to speak for
ten minutes only so I was fairly lighthearted, but I misjudged the
event.  For some reason I hadn't realized that I was expected to
discuss my latest novel.  Instead I attempted not very successfully to
be amusing.

This morning Joanna Mackle called for me at 9 a.m. and I drove with her
to Faber to sign another 750 copies of A Certain Justice.  The 1,000 I
signed last Monday have already been sold.

Back in the afternoon to attempt to catch up with the post, and then in
the evening to talk to the Association of Women Solicitors and Lawyers
at St.  John's Gate in Clerkenwell.  They had procured copies of the
novel, which I signed, and which were sold after the dinner.  The meal
was supposed to start at 7:30 but it was closer to 8:10 before we sat

December 1997 137

down and 9:50 before I rose to speak, which is much too late to do
justice to any subject.

Another late night, which is making me realize even more that winter
evening engagements will have to be cut down.

SATURDAY, I3TH DECEMBER

This morning to Westminster Abbey to lay a wreath on behalf of the
Johnson Society of London.  As usual, and through anxiety not to be
late, I arrived too early so walked up as far as the Army and Navy
Stores and then back to fill in time.  I had it in mind to sit quietly
in St.  Faith's Chapel in the Abbey, but access to this was blocked;
indeed it seemed impossible for anyone to go further than the main nave
without passing the desk and paying a charge to see the Royal Chapels.
The Abbey was very crowded and I wondered how long this ancient
monument could withstand the tramping feet and press of so many
millions.  The middle part of the nave was roped off for private
prayer, or for those wishing to sit quietly, but the background noise
was like the subdued roar of the sea.

The party from the Johnson Society was due to congregate near the tomb
of the Unknown Soldier at 12 o'clock, at which hour the Sub-Dean
announced that there would be a short prayer, and invited people to
stand still or sit for this.  Most stood, but others continued their
somewhat aimless perambulations, whilst a family with two small boys
made an exit, half-hurried, half-furtive, as if afraid of spiritual
contamination.

The short ceremony at Johnson's grave was impressive and rather moving.
We processed with the Beadle in front, followed by the Sub Dean and
then myself, carrying the wreath of laurels and white carnations, then
members of the Society.  After the Dean had spoken a short welcome, I
laid the wreath.  I had been asked to say a few words and I decided on
the following:

I lay this wreath on behalf of the Johnson Society of London to honour
a great Englishman and this country's greatest man of letters: Samuel
Johnson, moralist, essayist, lexicographer, critic, poet, genius of
both the written and the spoken word.  We honour him both as a writer
and as a man, remembering his generosity

and humanity and the courage with which his great heart endured
poverty, frustration, neglect and private pain.  With all lovers of the
English language, which he celebrated and glorified, we rejoice in the
legacy of literature which is his lasting memorial.  It is fitting that
he should be buried here in the London he loved and among the greatest
of our land; fitting too that, on the anniversary of his death, I
should end these few words by speaking in his memory the prayer which
he himself wrote and offered up before writing: "Almighty God, the
giver of all good things, without whose help all labour is ineffectual,
and without whose grace all wisdom is folly: grant, I beseech thee,
that in this undertaking thy Holy Spirit may not be withheld from me,
but that I may promote thy glory, and the salvation of myself and
others: grant this, O Lord, for the sake of thy son, Jesus Christ.
Amen."

I wondered whether it was entirely accurate to describe Johnson as our
nation's greatest man of letters, but decided that it was.  Shakespeare
is thought of primarily as a poet, Dickens as a novelist.  The term
"man of letters" suggests a polymath of literature as well as one whose
whole working life has been devoted to its cause.  Laying the wreath, I
thought how much Connor would have liked to be with us.  Samuel Johnson
was his great hero.

After the wreath-laying we went to the Vitello d'Oro near Church House
for an Italian meal, and then to a small conference room where I gave
my talk.  The Society had suggested that "The Moral Responsibility of
the Novelist" would be an appropriate title, and I found this more
challenging than my usual talk about the craft of writing detective
fiction.

Inevitably an overriding question asserts itself: If the novelist has a
moral responsibility, what is the morality from which that
responsibility derives?  The answer would have been obvious to a devout
Christian like Samuel Johnson, as it was to George Eliot or any of the
Brontes, but we no longer live in a predominantly Christian society.
Thus to speak of a novelist's moral responsibility seems to imply that
there is an immutable value system, an accepted view of the universe
and man's place in it, with a set of ethical rules of conduct to which
all right-minded people conform.

Even if this were true--and I do not think we can claim that it is in
our increasingly secular and fragmented society--one could question
whether it is the business of any creative artist to express or promote
it.

Dr.  Johnson, of course, had his own view of the matter:

December 1997 139

It is justly considered as the greatest excellency of art, to imitate
nature; but it is necessary to distinguish those parts of nature, which
are most proper for imitation; greater care is still required in
representing life, which is so often coloured by passion or deformed by
wickedness.  If the world be promiscuously described, I cannot see of
what use it can be to read the account; or why it may not be as safe to
turn the eye immediately upon mankind as upon a mirror which shows all
that presents itself without discrimination.

Many of the Victorian novelists, and particularly Anthony Trollope,
laid claims to moral purpose in the novel and were probably prudent to
do so.  After all, there still hung about novel-reading the sulphurous
whiff of indolent and almost decadent self-indulgence.  I don't think
that even the most didactic novelist today would claim that his or her
words should reform either institutions or people, although we may all
have an urge to nudge society's inclinations in a direction more
agreeable to our own beliefs and prejudices.  I imagine most writers
today would probably agree with that eighteenth-century, less
well-known writer, Richard Cumberland:

All that I am bound to do as a story-maker is to make a story.  I am
not bound to reform the constitution of my country in the same breath,
nor even, (Heaven be thanked!) to overturn it, although that may be the
easier task of the two.  Nature is my guide; man's nature, not his
natural rights.  The one ushers me by the straight avenue to the human
heart, the other bewilders me in a maze of metaphysics.

Certainly, for me, the intention of any novelist must surely be to make
that straight avenue to the human heart.

In the talk I went on to discuss the novelist's responsibility under
the headings of subject matter, characterization and style.  It can, I
think, be argued that it is absurd to claim that the question of moral
responsibility can enter into the novelist's choice of subject simply
because the idea of choice, of a conscious selection or rejection, is
illusory.  Every novelist writes what he or she needs to write, a
subconscious compulsion to express and explain his unique view of
reality.  If creativity is the successful resolution of internal
conflict, the creative writer seeks out of this

conflict to make sense of his experience of the world, to impose order
on disorder and to construct a controlled pattern from his own internal
chaos.  In support of this theory, that a writer's choice of subject is
more apparent than real, we can see how genre writers tend to stay with
that genre, and how easily we recognize the mind's topography in such
very different novelists as Thomas Hardy, Graham Greene, Virginia
Woolf, Barbara Pym, John le Carre, Jane Austen, P. G. Wodehouse, all of
whom create a distinctive and immediately recognizable world.

The crime novelist does not reject romantic fiction or science fiction
in favour of murder through conscious choice.  He or she needs to deal
with the atavistic fear of death, to exorcize the terror of violence
and to restore at least fictional peace and tranquillity after the
disruptive terror of murder, and to affirm the sanctity of human life
and the possibility of justice, even if it is only the fallible justice
of men.  A distinguished writer of novels of espionage like John le
Carre is as much fascinated by personal treachery and betrayal as he is
by the shoddy international bureaucracy of spying and the dangers and
excitement of the chase.  Espionage is his internal as well as his
external world.

Even so, there must be an element of choice both in subject and
treatment; no artist is so at the mercy of his subconscious that he is
totally without control of his imagination.  But if the novelist has a
duty to consider the effect of what he writes on the sensitivities of
his readers, it is surely also justifiable to ask whether those
sensitivities are reasonable or whether criticism and complaints are a
subtle attempt at censorship.

There are fashionable views on gender, race and political correctness
which a writer would be ill-advised to ignore if he wishes to avoid
controversy, and which take some courage to confront.

When it comes to style, it seems to me that the only moral
responsibility is for the writer to do his conscientious best with such
talent as he has been given to eschew plagiarism, avoid slovenly or
meretricious writing, abjure jargon and platitudes and to strive always
for that distinctive individual voice which we call style.

I ended the talk by considering the morality of the fiction I have
chosen to write.  I do, in fact, get asked from time to time whether it
is justifiable to use murder, sometimes appalling murder, to produce
books which are primarily for entertainment and relaxation.  In short,
does the detective story trivialize death and suffering?  And isn't it
true that the detective story too often subjugates all the elements of
a good novel-psychological truth, setting and atmosphere,
characterization--to the

December 1997 141

dominant needs of the plot, so that the writer, handcuffed to the need
to provide a puzzle and shackled to the conventions of the genre, can
never write with total honesty or truth?  Some of these criticisms are
as perverse and irrelevant as complaining that Jane Austen fails to
deal adequately with the Napoleonic Wars or with the barbarism of the
early nineteenth-century criminal justice system, or that Bertie
Wooster has an imperfect understanding of the socio-economic
consequences of twentieth-century capitalism.

Sometimes I am asked whether I am afraid that readers will get
murderous ideas from my books.  This is not a risk I take seriously:
detective novelists are hardly in the business of promoting successful
and undetected crime.  But I do impose a censorship, sometimes
subconscious, on what I write.  I can't read descriptions of torture or
watch these scenes on film or television, and I would never describe
the explosion of a terrorist bomb in the Underground.  This isn't
because terrorists need my imagination to provide them with murderous
ideas; it is a superstitious dread that the event might actually happen
and I would never afterwards be absolutely sure that I hadn't
contributed to the horror.

I very seldom describe the act of murder, but make no apology for
describing the dead victim realistically, and indeed vividly.  The
moment in a detective story when the body is discovered is one of
horror and high drama, and the reader should experience both.  I always
describe the scene through the eyes of the character in the novel who
discovers the body, and the scene is often most effective when that
character is herself or himself innocent.  The scene in A Taste for
Death where the bodies of the ex-Minister of the Crown and the tramp
are incongruously yoked in death in the vestry of a church in
Paddington provides that contrast which, I think, is so effective in
detective fiction, between horror and normality, evil and goodness. The
fact that the bodies are discovered by Miss Wharton and Darren adds to
the horror.  In the description I repeat the word "blood" again and
again because it was this all-pervasive redness which suffused Miss
Wharton's mind as it did her retina.  In Devices and Desires, however,
the body of Hilary Robarts is discovered by Adam Dalgliesh walking
along the shore at nightfall.  The description is analytical, cool, and
Dalgliesh's response after the initial shock is always that of a
professional detective.

All this is rather removed from the subject of today's talk.  I have
given myself quite a lot to think about; I am not sure whether the
audience found it equally interesting.

MONDAY, I5TH DECEMBER

To Westminster for a meeting in Church House of the Liturgical
Commission.

I don't think I am particularly useful on the Commission, to which I
was appointed by Archbishop Robert Runcie shortly before he retired.  I
enjoy the meetings I am able to get to, but the detailed work of
revision is largely done in small groups.  I like my fellow members,
who tolerate my theological ignorance with Christian charity, but they
are, of course, concerned to write or rewrite liturgy and my interest
as a Vice President of the Prayer Book Society is in attempting to
preserve the treasure we have.

The Commission generates more paper than almost any other committee on
which I have sat.  The highly experienced Secretary, David
Hebblethwaite, copes manfully, but my filing-cabinet drawer, which
Joyce has labelled "God," contains more bulging files than there are on
any other subject.  The bureaucracy of the Church of England would be
terrifying if it were efficient.

The Church of England hasn't shown much interest in or respect for its
rich heritage of literature during the last decades and some parish
priests, many of whom can't cope with Cranmerian prose, would point out
that their concerns lie elsewhere than in preserving what they see as
an archaic and irrelevant liturgy.  What surprises me is the neglect of
the King James Bible and the Book of Common Prayer by academics and its
absence from the A-level English syllabus.  Even for people
uninterested in or unconvinced by Cranmer's reformation theology, his
Prayer Book is one of the great glories of English literature.  It is
difficult, too, to understand how students can read Shakespeare or view
with understanding some of the greatest paintings in our galleries
without some knowledge of the Authorized Version of the Bible or
Tyndale's translation on which it is based.  I have been told by
friends who teach English at universities that they have to give a
short course in basic Christianity to some of their English students
before some books of the canon are comprehensible.

In his magisterial biography of Thomas Cranmer, published in 1996,
Diarmid MacCulloch said that Cranmer is among "a select band of Tudor
writers, from Tyndale to Shakespeare, who set English on its

December 1997 143

future course" and that "millions who have never heard of Cranmer or of
the muddled heroism of his death have echoes of his words in their
minds."  I wonder how long those words and cadences will, in fact,
echo.

I must resist paranoia, but it is sometimes difficult not to believe
that there are people with a more sinister purpose than the neglect of
two of the nation's most seminal books.  If you want to destroy a
country's traditions and soften it up for a culture you personally find
more to your liking, there is no better way to begin than by an attack
on its language and literature.

WEDNESDAY, 24TH DECEMBER

It was on this day in 1979 that I retired from the Home Office.  The
second part of my service was less satisfying than the first.  I was
transferred to the Children's Department, whose responsibilities were
then being reallocated to the Department of Health and Social Security,
and then to the Criminal Policy Department, where I was concerned with
juvenile courts and the law relating to juvenile offenders.  The
Department's chief concern was the Children and Young Person's Act 1969
which revised the law relating to juveniles and set up, among other
provisions, the care order.  The job of the Civil Service is to help
implement Government policy, not to criticize it--and certainly not at
my level, of Principal-but it seemed to me that the Act, based, as far
as I know, on no research evidence, was mistaken from the beginning.
The underlying premise was that any delinquency or serious criminal
behaviour in a child or young person is the result of the juvenile's
circumstances and environment.  Put this right and all will be well. In
serious cases, therefore, the Juvenile Court would have power to place
the offender in local authority care where he would receive the loving
and responsible guidance and protection which he could expect from a
good parent.  Children at risk of abuse or ill-treatment could be
similarly placed in care if the necessary conditions were satisfied.

The Maria Colwell tragedy, when Maria, under supervision by her local
authority, was murdered by her stepfather, had an immediate impact on
legislative proposals for strengthening the child protection provisions
of the 1959 Act.  Ministers announced that it would never

be allowed to happen again.  It has, of course, happened again, and not
infrequently.  I feel some sympathy with social workers, who are faced
with an appalling dilemma.  They are criticized if they leave a child
in her home and she is subsequently abused or even murdered; they are
criticized if they too readily take her into care.  It doesn't surprise
me that they have so often got it wrong; what does surprise me is the
extraordinary and irrational optimism with which Parliament and the
profession assumed they could get it right.

The years have shown how misguided the Act was.  The official view put
forward by the DHSS at the time and endorsed by ministers generally,
was that any defects in its working were due to lack of resources.  Of
course there were not adequate resources; there never are.  All
governments are fond of legislating for what they see as social reforms
well in advance of providing the necessary funds for implementing the
changes.

But the main problem was not lack of money, it was the lack of skill
and experience.  The new local authority Social Services were formed in
the wake of the Seebohm and Redcliffe-Maud reorganizations.  There was
to be one integrated training for social workers, who were presumed to
be able to undertake any aspect of the work.  Inexperienced young
people imbued with the latest socio-economic theories were faced with
some of the most intractable problems of child delinquency or child
abuse.  It is small wonder that both the supervision orders and the
care orders were largely ineffective.  We have now had some years of
experience of what local authority residential care has meant for
thousands of deprived, unhappy young people.

I decided that I should leave on Christmas Eve at the age of fifty-nine
years and six months.  I was not due to receive my lump sum and to
start my pension until my sixtieth birthday on 3rd August, but the
success of Innocent Blood made early retirement possible.  I had given
the usual goodbye party earlier in the week and the office was very
quiet and almost empty when I cleared the last drawer, washed my tea
mug, packed it away in my tote-bag and closed the door for the last
time.  They had been twelve good years.  I had gained experience which
had been invaluable in writing Death of an Expert Witness and Innocent
Blood, and was to prove equally valuable in future.  I left with
considerable respect for this much-misunderstood department and I had
made more than one lasting friend.  My life as a bureaucrat was now at
an end and it was time to go.

DIARY 1998

January

THURSDAY, 8TH JANUARY

I spent today completing my packing for the American tour which begins
tomorrow, and tackling the bulging "Pending" file with Joyce.  I had a
telephone interview with the Dayton Daily News, advance publicity for
my arrival there on i6th January.  Dayton, Ohio, has not been included
before in any of my American tours, but I have what is in effect a fan
club there, largely due to the friendship and the vigorous support of a
local journalist, Rosamond Young.  Rosamond has persuaded my
publishers, Alfred A. Knopf, that a visit to her town would be well
worth the detour; knowing her, I've no doubt that it will be.

Perhaps the greatest change in publishing since my girlhood has been
the death--sometimes dramatic, sometimes after a protracted period of
ailing--of small individual publishing houses and the emergence of
conglomerates, many of them international firms with wide and varying
interests of which publishing is only a part.  Publishing is, indeed,
in danger of becoming an international monopoly with serious
consequences not only for writers, but for the future of literature.  A
second great change, which has been strongly influenced by the first,
is in the marketing of books.

Before the war if you produced a new work of fiction, it would, if
accepted, be published and, if the writer were well-known or lucky,
reviewed and discreetly advertised.  There might be journalistic
features in newspapers and magazines and if the book were considered
scandalous, as was The Well of Loneliness, the consequent furore would
keep journalists and readers in a state of profitable indignation for
weeks.  A new novel was like a boat: the frail craft would be launched
and left to breast the waves of public taste and the winds of critical
acclaim or disdain either to sink or swim, without much help from the
publisher.  Some publishers, indeed, seemed to consider their imprint
so prestigious that writers were fortunate to be published by them; it
would be unreasonable for the author to expect

his publisher actively to sell the book or to concern himself overmuch
with such sordid commercial concerns as sales figures or promotion.

Nowadays a new novel, particularly one which looks as if it has a
chance of getting on to a national or international bestseller list, is
promoted, packaged and sold like a new perfume.  In this process the
author is expected to take an active part, notably through author
tours.  To some this is a pleasure, to others an ordeal, while some few
resolutely decline to participate.  How far this hinders their sales
is, I think, open to question.

I can never find any reliable research on the profitability of author
tours but, as publishers are still prepared to spend thousands of
pounds arranging them, they must consider the time and effort
worthwhile.

Sometimes my family and friends say to me before a major tour, "Why do
you do it?  Surely you don't need to?"  Part of the answer, I think, is
my always feeble wish to be accommodating, particularly as I have a
personal affection for my publishers both at home and in the USA. There
is also the assurance that I shall travel in extreme comfort, be looked
after all the way, shall meet friends from previous tours and probably
enjoy new experiences.  But I think the chief reason is the pleasure of
meeting my readers face-to-face.  Readers of crime fiction are
remarkably loyal, knowledgeable and enthusiastic.  I have never faced
an audience before a &

signing without a sense of being among personal friends.

I have learned now to pace myself; I know, too, what is and what is not
possible.  A few years ago I made it plain that I wanted the minimum of
socializing on tour; indeed, that what I liked best was to go back to
my hotel at the end of the day, have room service and relax.  This was
difficult for the hospitable Americans to understand.  They hated the
thought that their author was spending the evening alone.  But it
really was impossible to cope with a day of publicity and follow it
with a party in which the same questions--"Where do you get your ideas?
When did you know you wanted to be a writer?  Do you use a
word-processor?"-are reiterated over the wine or the dinner table.

I also early laid it down that I wanted only two press interviews at a
time.  Ten or so years ago I was on my USA tour in San Francisco when I
had one press interview from 9 to 10, another from 10 to 11, and the
third from ii to 12.  Each journalist had brought a tape recorder to
place between us, and what I endured was three hours of continuous
interrogation.  Until that experience I had always in my naivety found
it difficult to understand why suspects questioned by the police
confessed when they were innocent.

I now know how psychologically distressing, indeed traumatic,
interrogation

January 1998 149

can be.  But at least, had I been a police suspect it is doubtful
whether the questioning would have lasted for three virtually
uninterrupted hours.  So now press interviews are interspersed with
television or radio.  I find the last two much easier, indeed often
enjoyable.  The other person is actively participating in die
discussion and we share a joint wish to make the broadcast or programme
interesting to the viewer or listener and satisfying for ourselves.

I have seen great cities which I would not otherwise have visited, have
received much generosity and kindness and have shared much laughter.

I imagine that I shall continue to undertake major writer tours as long
as I continue to write and have the strength.  But this method of
selling books, promoting the writer rather as if he or she were a pop
star, seems a curious, even a farcical, concomitance.  I note that
today a new writer who is young and physically attractive starts with a
considerable initial advantage.  He or she will be a hit on the
publicity trail; the image is promotable and acceptable.  There is,
too, a curious development of which Swan, a novel supposedly written by
the model Naomi Campbell, is an example.  We live in an age which,
despite its apparent sophistication and its technological advancement,
is remarkable for silliness and gullibility.

What can be the possible interest of reading a book reputedly written
by Naomi Campbell unless she has in fact written it?

Soon we shall get to the stage where a bestseller will be written by a
computer with all the necessary ingredients of sex and violence fed
into the machine.  The publisher will then find a young man or woman
with a fashionable face, appropriate body measurements, and a
sensational emotional and sexual life, and place his or her name on the
title page.  I suppose the book could then be sold on the Internet and
would no doubt cause a literary sensation.

In the meantime there still seems to be considerable interest in an
elderly grandmother who writes traditional English detective fiction.

And so I embark tomorrow on the major American tour, which will take me
to twelve cities in nineteen days.

MONDAY, I9TH JANUARY

I arrived in Dallas yesterday from Pittsburgh, am here for two nights,
and shall leave on Tuesday for Houston.  I am still in good health
and

spirits after ten hectic days.  I arrived in Boston on 9th January and
then continued to New York, Washington, Chicago, Dayton and
Pittsburgh.

I have seen little of any of these cities, except for the interiors of
television and radio studios, book shops and the venues for talks and
lectures.

But all the experiences have been good so far, with large and
enthusiastic audiences, sometimes numbering as many as 400.  This is
less a tribute to my drawing power or popularity than an indication of
cultural differences between our two nations.  Even if it were rumoured
that Graham Greene had risen from the dead, I doubt whether we would
get audiences of this size in England to listen to a writer.

I was glad Knopf included Dayton in the tour.  Roz Young more than
fulfilled her promise; my signing and talk at Books and Company was
more like being welcomed home after a long absence than a first visit,
and it was interesting to spend the night at a hotel which wasn't
five-star and where I could meet and eat with a cross-section of
Americans.

It is a truism to say that Texas is large, but it is this immensity,
the sense of space stretching out, flat, featureless, limitless, sky
and land indistinguishable, which strikes me every time I travel in the
state, inducing a faint agoraphobia.  I feel the absence of water, of
sea or lake or river, like a parched throat.  The Dallas skyline could
be almost any American city.  Approaching from the airport, the roads
curve on their high T-shaped struts of concrete.  The exit signs point
to different communities, sometimes disconcertingly called cities. Most
of these seem to have grown up, or rather been spontaneously brought
into being, since my last visit.  The city itself, indeed, seems the
creation of real estate;

nothing here is huddled together, space is there for the taking.  But
how could one live in any of these communities without a car?  Unable
to drive, for me it would be too like living in an open prison with
fellow inmates of the same class, background and income; every physical
need catered for admirably and often with imagination but in an
intimacy more circumscribed than solitary confinement.

The hotel had a notice to say that it was illegal to bring in concealed
weapons.  Does this mean that loaded guns held at the ready are
acceptable?

An interview in the morning with a journalist from the Dallas Morning
News was loosely based on a former Vanity Fair interview which has
surfaced often during this tour.  The interviewer, like many others,
asked about Princess Diana.  Why wouldn't the Queen grieve?  I was
tempted to point out that, had I been the Queen, my grieving, though
sincere, would not have been excessive.  Instead I said that not
everyone

January 1998 151

showed grief by pinning teddy-bears and flowers to the railings of
public parks.  We then went on for some reason to talk about Myra
Hindley.  Had I visited her in prison?  No.  Why not?  I replied that,
since there was nothing I needed to say to her, or presumably she to
me, and nothing I could usefully do for her, a visit would be too much
like morbid voyeurism.

I had my hair washed and set at a salon opposite the hotel in a high
complex of shops with a centre courtyard with water and trees,
balconies and seats set out where shoppers could rest in comfort.  I
found it cool and pleasant.  In the salon a young stylist was trimming
the beard of an older customer, kneeling in front of him like a
supplicant and delicately parting, combing and snipping the silken
hairs of the long beard with a concentrated, almost loving dedication.
I hadn't seen this done before.

WEDNESDAY, 28TH JANUARY

I am writing this on the BA flight on my way home from Miami.  The
captain promised a relatively smooth flight, but this was optimistic
and my wine slopped over the pristine tablecloth as soon as it was
served.  I like the redesigned first-class cabin of British Airways.  I
am sitting, as I did on my way out, in my own capsule, my window seat
isolated from the rest of the cabin by a curved partition with a panel
of buttons to my left to operate the various seat positions.  This I
find more convenient than the previous system of having them in the
armrests where I could never comfortably reach them when wearing a
seat-belt, nor easily identify which button was which.  The main
advantage of the redesigned seat is that one can lie flat and attempt
to sleep.  One button when pressed elongates the seat into a bed and
each passenger is provided with a duvet and pillow.  At least one male
passenger changed early into his pyjamas and settled down dinner less
for the night.  This morning the cabin, with passengers neatly folding
their duvets, had the appearance of a small and exceptionally luxurious
school or army dormitory.  I had no appetite for breakfast, but early
morning tea arrived on a small tray with elegant teapot and jug.
First-class travel, provided one hasn't to pay for it oneself, is the
most insidiously addictive of life's luxuries.

My hotel in Miami, the Biltmore, was the largest and most impressive at
which I had stayed.  I love five-star American hotels, not because of
the

luxury, but because they are so wonderfully efficient and anonymous.

One is a transient among other transients.  Nothing is here of previous
visitors and I shall leave behind nothing of myself.  To return to the
room after an absence is to find everything immaculate as if the
absolving hands of the chambermaid have smoothed away more than the
detritus of the past day.  I think I could write in such a place.  On
tour, however, there is hardly time even to appreciate the comfort. But
I shall remember breakfast at the Biltmore.  I ate it in warm sunshine
in the courtyard under a palm tree and beside the largest hotel
swimming pool in the United #

States; each breakfast was separately cooked in an open-air kitchen,
the f.

smell of bacon overlaying the warm scent of flowers and water.

The last day of the tour in Miami was the only one on which there was
spare time.  My minder took me to see Miami Beach.  A thin rain was
falling and a sluggish tide crept wearily over the deserted and pitted
sand.  Versace's house, the gates locked, looked elegant and
incongruous among the sugar-candy colours of the innumerable hotels.
For someone whose ideal of a day at the sea is a secluded and empty
cove, Miami in high season must be Hell-on-Sea.  From there we were
driven to the botanical gardens.  The weather had by then improved and
we enjoyed a quiet walk under the trees and by the lakes.

There was still some time to spare before leaving for the airport, so
my last event in the States was a visit to a cinema to see Titanic,
something I could just as well have done back home.  It is over-long
but the special effects are certainly memorable and will no doubt
achieve an Oscar.  I didn't believe in the young lovers and was
irritated by the usual Hollywood anti-British bias.  The Englishmen all
wore evening dress to demonstrate their upper-class unfeeling
arrogance, even on the last night of the voyage, when they would not
have changed for dinner, while the Irish were happy innocents dancing
their jigs below deck.  One of the crew, who in real-life had behaved
impeccably, was shown as a murdering coward, which I thought
unforgivable.  The young hero, Leonardo di Caprio, clung to the
wreckage on which Kate Winslett was elegantly lying to deliver a
poignant valedictory speech before sinking slowly out of sight.  I felt
the energy required for this could have been better spent in swimming
to a similar piece of wreckage and keeping himself alive.

But I have no doubt the film will be an immense success with adolescent
girls all over the world.  It was an odd way of spending my last
evening.

Soon we shall prepare for landing and the tour will finally be over. It
has been far less exhausting than I feared, except for the days in
New

January 1998 153

York and Washington.  I enjoyed the company of the three publicists
from Knopf who accompanied me--Sophie, Jill and Gabriella--all
enthusiastic, intelligent and highly capable.  I could not have been
better looked after.

THURSDAY, 29TH JANUARY

Joanna from Faber telephoned yesterday to discuss the cover for the
trade paperback of A Certain Justice and we talked about the new Ted
Hughes collection of poems, Birthday Letters.  She promised to send a
copy and it arrived this morning.  It was impossible not to begin
reading at once and just as impossible to stop once I'd begun.
Inevitably one's response to the poems is influenced by the joint
tragedies; how could it be otherwise?  I have always felt great
sympathy for Ted Hughes and huge respect for the dignified silence with
which he has endured years of calumny.  No woman who is the mother of
young children and kills herself can be sane, and this degree of mental
pain has its roots far deeper than the imperfections of a marriage.
Equally no one who has never had to live with a partner who is mentally
ill can possibly understand what this means.  Two people are in
separate hells, but each intensifies the other.  Those who have not
experienced this contaminating misery should keep silent.

But now Ted Hughes's thirty-five years of silence are broken.  I have
never found him an easy poet, but then why should he be?  Poetry is
like religion: sometimes the vision is immediate and almost frightening
in its intensity; sometimes it is reached with difficulty, giving
intimations only, and those confused and partial.  Here the verse,
unimpeded by a jumble of feral imagery, flows like a clear strong
stream bearing the weight of pity, terror and regret.  The poems are
too honest to read as an attempt at justification.  They^nay be a means
of exorcism.  Certainly they are a tribute of love.  '

February

TUESDAY, 3RD FEBRUARY

I looked forward to today as I do to any day on which I am to see a
daughter or a grandchild.  I was invited to deliver a lecture to the
Cambridge Union on "Fiction: Has It a Future?"  and arranged in the
morning to have lunch with Beatrice, to see her room at college and
then, after the lecture, to spend the night with Clare.

It has been a bright day but exceedingly cold.  There is something
about the coldness of Cambridge that is peculiarly raw and I wished I'd
been warmer clad.  However, I bought a second scarf on my walk from the
centre of the city to Trinity, and this helped.  Beatrice took me to
lunch at a restaurant specializing in pasta, and then I saw and admired
her room and rested on her bed while she did some quiet reading before
going to a lecture.  When she returned she and a fellow student walked
me to the Union, where the officers of the Union took me to dinner
before the talk.

Both my young escorts are reading history and they asked me what it was
like living in Cambridge during the war, and why was it, did I think,
that my generation had been so dilatory and so reluctant to stand up to
Hitler?  I explained that this was very largely the result of the First
World War.  When my parents talked about the past, they seemed always
to be dwelling on the war and on the destruction of a whole generation
of young men.  My generation was born under a pall of inarticulate
grieving.

One of my earliest Ludlow memories is of a terraced house with a
photograph of a fresh-faced private, himself hardly more than a child,
in the window between small Union Jacks.  It was one of many such
humble and poignant shrines.  Then later we read the poets of the Great
War, Wilfred Owen, Siegfried Sassoon, Isaac Rosenberg, saw the films,
particularly All Quiet on the Western Front, and read the war novels.
We grew up

February 1998 155

with the conviction that war in its horror, its brutality and its
degradation was the greatest calamity possible and must at all costs be
avoided.

The words "never again," spoken or unspoken, were ever-present.

My father, who fought in the 1914-18 war, could never really believe
that Europe could allow it to happen again, not even when, on 3rd
September 1939, war was declared.  And even if we were to "stand up to
Hitler"--a euphemism for going to war--when and how would that be
possible?  We had disarmed.  Even if the mothers of England had been
happy to see their sons slaughtered in the defence of the Rhineland or
Czechoslovakia, the men and the money weren't there.  In the end we
realized, as did Europe, that the confrontation was inevitable and
began to re-arm.  We went to war with none of the patriotic fervour or
enthusiasm of 1914, but with the grim realization that this war was
both inevitable and just, and would have to be seen through.

The young men thought it wrong to judge the past by the standards of
the present and they are of course right.  No doubt in a hundred years'
time our descendants will marvel that we were able to watch the death
by starvation or the massacre of thousands on our television screens
and yet did nothing to stop it.  Yet what could we have done about
Rwanda?

Admittedly, given sufficient will, an army could have been sent to stop
the killings; but what would follow?  Could we permanently occupy a
country and rule it?  Stopping fighting is one thing; effecting
reconciliation between tribes which have been hating each other for
generations is less easy.  I doubt whether it can ever be achieved by
the intervention of a foreign power.

We talked about what it was like to live in Cambridge in the early days
of the war.  I can recall a series of sounds and images: the
disciplined tramp of young feet as companies of airmen in training
marched through the streets with flashes in their caps; the city
crowded with unfamiliar people--evacuated civil servants, academics
from other universities, refugees; dancing at the McGrath Ballroom with
young airmen from the East Anglian fighter and bomber stations in the
knowledge that the boy I danced with one Saturday might not be there
the following week.  His friends would just say "he couldn't come."  I
wouldn't ask why, partly because I knew and partly because they were
not there to remember death.

A particular memory is of going to work one morning at the Ministry of
Food to find the lawn of Christ's College completely covered with

sleeping and exhausted soldiers, gaunt-faced and mud-stained and still
in their battle dress.  They were part of the remnant of the Dunkirk
evacuation.

I'll never know how and by what means they found themselves apparently
dumped at this incongruous staging post.

Our entertainment came from the wireless and from films.  The war years
produced some memorable films: Stagecoach, Gone With the Wind, The
Wizard of Oz and Of Mice and Men all appeared in 1939.  Queues would
lengthen outside the cinemas while we waited for what we called "the
big picture" to end.  The performance was continuous and as the couples
came out, the doorman would call "four one-and six-pennies," and the
queue would shuffle forward.  The British film industry geared itself
for the propaganda war.  Some early films I saw, in their banality,
probably provided more comfort to the enemy than encouragement for us,
but Carol Reed's The Way Ahead and This Happy Breed, and Laurence
Olivier's Henry V remain in the memory.  I began for the first time to
watch French films with Connor: Les Enfants du Paradis, Le Your se
Leve.

During the war, cinema was at its most creative, its most influential
and its most entertaining.  I have seldom gone to the cinema since with
the same anticipatory pleasure.

We were comparatively safe in Cambridge.  A few inadvertent bombs were
dropped and there were casualties but the main thrust of the war was
elsewhere.  I remember climbing the Gog Magog Hills and seeing the
distant red glare of the sky where London was burning, remember, too,
hearing our heavy bombers leaving on their raids, seeming to lift
themselves grunting into the air.  There is one persistent and vivid
memory.

I had spent an afternoon with an elderly friend of my mother's,
visiting a relation of hers who lived in a distant village.  We were
returning to Cambridge by bus in the darkness when the Germans raided
the East Anglian airfields.  We rumbled slowly on between the low
hedges and the flat landscape, hearing the crash of distant bombs and
ringed by fire.  It reminded me of the burning of stubble after the
harvest.  The blacked out bus didn't stop--what would have been the
point?--but I remember that we all sat in absolute silence.  It wasn't
the silence of fear, more the weariness of the journey and a resigned
acceptance.  My elderly companion slept, slumped against me.  The raids
weren't close enough for there to be real danger, but I had a sensation
of grinding onward inexorably through a deserted landscape that had
become alien and surreal.  The sights and sounds of Cambridge at war
come back clearly, but the emotion is more elusive.  I have no
recollection of fear--not then--or, I

February 1998 157

think, of any apprehension that the war would be lost.  I suppose I
felt healthy, alive, optimistic, eager for life; in other words, I felt
young.

SUNDAY, STH FEBRUARY

This was a golden day with weather to match: sunny, even warm, and with
a clear blue sky.  Jane and Peter arrived shortly after ten and we took
a hurried glance at the papers before setting out for our walk.  We
went to Holland Park, wended our way down the most agreeable streets
north of Kensington Library, then through to Hyde Park and as far as
Watt's statue of energy.  I had taken some bread with me and on our
return we threw pellets to the seagulls which swooped and shrieked,
snatching the bread on the wing.  Some of the people strolling in the
sunshine round the pond must have been carrying their weight of
unhappiness, but the air seemed to sing with pleasure.  The old men
were racing their model boats, the children chasing the pigeons, others
sitting in the sunshine reading their books, the lovers strolling
hand-in-hand.

We walked round the sunken garden at the Palace, now in its winter
decrepitude but bringing back memories of tulips and the scents of high
summer.  Peter hadn't visited it before.  Walking out over the grass I
hoped again that the proposed Princess Diana Memorial Garden would not
be built here.  There is already the sunken garden, and the great
stretch of green is so important--and not only to the residents of
Kensington walking their dogs.  Surely some more appropriate place can
be found.

Afterwards we went back to Holland Park and had an early lunch at the
Belvedere; a good meal eaten in pleasant surroundings and in peace
before the usual Sunday lunchtime rush.  The plan was then to go on by
car to the Tate.  Jane demurred at first, feeling tired, but we
persuaded her, after which she admitted to the prospect of pleasure.

The Tate was busy, as it always is on a Sunday afternoon, but not
disagreeably so.  We visited one of my favourite pictures, William
Dyce's Pegwell Bay.  I like Victorian painting, including genre
painting, and this has always appealed to me largely, I suppose,
because it's a seascape and I love the contrast of the gaunt, dark,
almost ageless cliffs and the Victorian figures in the foreground.  But
for so peaceful and innocent a view I found it a disturbing picture,
one which always induces in me the same

gentle melancholy.  The painter stands underneath the cliffs looking up
at the faintly discernible comet streaking across the sky, but the
women are preoccupied in collecting shells, almost as if they were
totally detached from the beauty around them and oblivious to the
wonder in the sky.  One knows that the shells would later be used to
decorate boxes or photograph frames, one of the ways in which the
underemployed middleclass Victorian woman managed to pass her time. The
picture seems to speak of the transience and pointlessness of human
life, of the brief span of our days measured against the intensity of
space and time.  But I love it and wish I had it on my walls.

Jane wanted to see the Bacons, so Peter and I walked through the Turner
galleries.  I know that Turner is a great painter--but I don't respond
to him as I do to lesser geniuses.  Peter and Jane drove straight home
from the gallery after dropping me in Holland Park Avenue.  It has been
one of those days which will remain in memory, one more to be carefully
shored up against ruin.

THURSDAY, I2TH FEBRUARY

I went at 2 o'clock to Bush House to discuss on the BBC World Service

Thrones, Dominations, Jill Paton Walsh's completion of an unfinished
novel by Dorothy L. Sayers.  Our interviewer was Harriett Gilbert.  I
had been sent the six chapters some time ago and asked whether I would
like to complete the novel, but I didn't think it could satisfactorily
be done.

The fragment, obviously very much a first draft, was about 40,000 words
long and DLS was clearly less concerned with plotting a detective story
than with the preoccupation previously dealt with in Gaudy Night:

How does a woman with both heart and brain reconcile the emotional and
sexual side of her nature with her intellect?

She certainly never managed to do this satisfactorily herself.  It is
interesting how often unintelligent, even stupid, women manage their
emotional lives more satisfactorily than do their cleverer sisters.
When Harriet Vane says in Gaudy Night that the reason she values the
life of the mind is because this is the only part of her life she
hasn't made a mess of, she is obviously speaking for her author.  DLS
was made deeply unhappy, even distraught, by her unconsummated love
affair with John Courtos,

February 1998 159

subsequently found sexual satisfaction but no commitment in the arms of
a married philanderer, and finally married a divorced man who resented
her fame and sank into alcoholic bad temper.  No wonder she distrusted
the emotions.  For Dorothy L. Sayers, even her religion was a matter of
intellectual assent to dogma, not an emotional response to a personal
God.

Jill Paton Walsh, an admirer both of Sayers and of Lord Peter, has
managed to reflect the Sayers style, remain true to the proposed theme
and provide a detective story very much in the mode of the 1930$.  She
has not incorporated the whole of the Sayers draft, wisely excluding
the more embarrassing passages.  I easily detected the vital clue and
had little doubt about the identity of the murderer but this, too, made
the book typical of its age.  I doubt whether anyone could have done it
better.

Afterwards I went to the House to listen to the second reading of the
Crime and Punishment Bill and two speeches on the abolition of doli
incapax, the requirement of courts to be satisfied that children
accused of criminal acts know that the acts are seriously wrong, not
merely childish bad behaviour.  I made a brief and not particularly
relevant intervention in which I recounted an incident I saw in a
juvenile court.  An agreeable small delinquent with the face of a
roguish angel and attired in a multi-striped hand-knitted pullover had
been accused of letting off an air gun in a supermarket.

His response to the question whether he knew it was wrong--"I knew it
was against the law, but I didn't know it was wrong"--provided a nice
problem of law for the juvenile justices.

SATURDAY, I4TH FEBRUARY

Yesterday I had dinner at the Dorchester with Rosemary Herbert, the
journalist from Boston whom I first met when she interviewed me about
twenty years ago and who has become something of an expert on crime
writing.  Rosemary is at present Editor-in-Chief of a compendium of
crime writing to be published by Oxford University Press.  She is
anxious for me to cooperate on an anthology of the best crime short
stories in the last hundred years, to be published at the Millennium.
The suggestion is that I write the foreword and introductions to the
selected stories.  I said I would not wish any major work to be
published by a publisher other than Faber and suggested that she
provide a written proposal which I could consider, and if necessary
discuss.

I am not a natural collaborator and I suspect that few novelists are. A
novel is essentially the product of an individual voice and a single
concentrated mind.  Drama can be collaborative and textbooks frequently
are, but I can think of no major work of fiction written by more than
one author.  Canaletto might ask an apprentice to paint in an inch or
two of waves, but I can't imagine Dickens, however hard pressed,
handing over a synopsis to a pupil and asking him to help out with some
of the duller chapters.

A car called this morning to drive me to Birmingham to take part in the
BBC quiz programme Call My Bluff.  Our captain was Alan Coren and my
fellow panel list the actor Michael Maloney.  On the other side were
Kate Adie, Sandi Toksvig and Robert Claws.  I can remember when Frank
Muir sat on one side against Patrick Campbell, now alas both dead.  I
am told that they took the game with deadly seriousness and both hated
to lose.  Luckily our captain was less fanatical, but I was surprised
how glad I was not to have made a fool of myself.  The final score for
both games was a draw of three points each.

The game was recorded at the International Convention Centre and I was
astounded how much the centre of Birmingham has changed for the better.
I remember going to my father-in-law's funeral some fifteen years ago
and walking out of Birmingham Station to take a look at the city while
waiting for my connection.  The Bull Ring appalled me: a concrete
monstrosity in which only motorists, criminals and psychopaths could
feel at home.  It is still in place, but I believe the city fathers
plan to demolish it.  In contrast, the development by the canal is
impressive and obviously designed for human beings.  Old brick
buildings have been restored and there are outdoor cafes and walkways
by the canal.

Gradually some cities are putting right the follies of the 19605.

SUNDAY, 22ND FEBRUARY

At Southwold with Lyn and Clare.  Yesterday was dull and with
intermittent rain but still warm.  Clare and I went to the small
antique shop

February 1998 161

in the High Street to buy her birthday present.  She chose an
enchanting Victorian souvenir of Cambridge, a little circular wooden
inkstand with a glass pot and a coloured plaque of King's College
Chapel, together with two very heavy square-cut glass ink stands  I
found another brown Doulton jug for the kitchen shelf.  We had a
celebration dinner at the Swan and then went back to the house to
review the rough-cut video of

A Certain Justice.

This was more enjoyable and did less violence to the story than I had
feared.  The fact remains that it is impossible adequately to adapt a
long and complex novel for the small screen in three episodes.
Inspector Piers Tarrant has been dropped, with the somewhat risible
effect that Dalgliesh and Kate Miskin appear to be the only police
officers on the job, evoking the comment from Clare that Scotland Yard
was obviously economizing on manpower.  This impression is reinforced
by the number of interviews which Dalgliesh conducts, not at
headquarters, but at any convenient place where he happens to be.  But
the beginning is very effective, a clever piece of adaptation, and the
acting good throughout.

At first I thought that the actress playing Octavia, Venetia's
daughter, was too pretty, but she conveyed an impression of
vulnerability combined with obstinacy which is effective, and the young
man playing the psychopath--an extremely difficult part--is convincing.
The trial scene is well done (court scenes seldom fail on television),
but the actress playing Venetia moves in court to demonstrate how far a
television set is from the witness.  I had learned during research that
barristers do not move in court and that she would have asked a
solicitor to do this for her.  As it is, every barrister will note the
mistake.  Another anomaly is the introduction of Venetia's memorial
service.  The time scale of the novel is short; indeed the plot depends
on this; and in the book there hasn't even been time for the inquest,
let alone a cremation and memorial service.

But I can see a reason for introducing it.  Dalgliesh is present, as
are all the barrister suspects, and the camera can range from face to
face with the unspoken question: Is this the one?  The scene is not
true to the book, but if I mildly protest I am sure I shall be met with
the usual excuse:

it makes good television.  On the whole, though, I think this will be
regarded as one of the more successful adaptations.

I awoke today to beautiful spring weather.  Lyn and I walked round the
dunes to Walberswick and met Clare, who had taken the path across the
common, at the Harbour Inn.  It didn't open for coffee until 12, so
we

didn't wait but walked back on the narrow path fringing the road and
the water meadows and had a drink at the Lord Nelson.  We left as
darkness fell, and I spent the night with Lyn and Clare in Cambridge.

MONDAY, 2.3RD FEBRUARY

The Prime Minister has exhorted us to show a little more enthusiasm for
the Millennium Dome, which he has prophesied will be the envy of the
world.  This I rather doubt, but I imagine that the Dome Experience
will be some kind of repetition of the Diana Experience; once it
becomes fashionable to make one's pilgrimage, everyone will want to
join in.  It can't be allowed to be a failure and if enough money is
spent on promotion, it won't be.  Perhaps the country will be gripped
by Dome mania.

I don't in the least object to a pleasure dome providing a happy day
out for all the family, but I do feel antagonistic to the idea that
this will be some great cultural experience.  If I want to immerse
myself in the history of England I have the National Portrait Gallery
as well as the VA and the British Museum, and any passion for
scientific achievement can be met by the National Science Museum.  For
those who want to experience religious emotion, our country's churches,
cathedrals and all other places of worship offer a more appropriate
place than the spiritual area of the Dome.

I suppose what I most dislike about it is the idea of spending 750
million on a building without first knowing what its purpose will be.
If we are celebrating 2,000 years of recorded time, surely something
more permanent could have been erected, preferably a modern theatre for
opera and dance.  Visitors could come up by river--a quarter of the
cost of the Dome could subsidize river boats--and there could be
restaurants and riverside gardens.  Then the Royal Opera House,
suitably renovated and with its facilities updated, could be used for
smaller operas.  I suggested this when I was a member of the Arts
Council but I can't rem em j her that it was received with particular
enthusiasm.  &

Hubris has inspired me to celebrate the Dome with a Dome Pome.

This is likely to be the only verse included in my diary, which is just
as well:

February 1998 163

O Dome gigantic, Dome immense

Built in defiance of common sense.

Wide-stretching Dome, O Dome sublime!

Memorial to recorded time

How justified will hubris be

When all the world bows down to thee.

When millions in awe will scan

This miracle of modern man.

For though its shape holds no surprise

There's no denying it has size.

In Greece they'll grit their teeth and foam

In envy of our Wonder Dome,

And crowds will riot in Peru

Demanding that they have one too.

They'll groan from Chad to Montserrat

"How come we never thought of that?"

Italians will weep and swear

"St.  Peter's dome cannot compare,

Nor all the monuments in Rome

Surpass Great Britain's Wonder Dome."

And Frenchmen soured with Gallic pride

Will hardly bear to look inside,

The USA will greatly rue it

To think that only Brits could do it,

While millions join the Greenwich queue

From Togoland to Timbuktu.

And God Himself is stricken dumb

To see how clever we've become.

March

SUNDAY, 1ST MARCH

I took the 7:30 a.m. bus from Gloucester Green, Oxford, expecting that
the m/i.o would be very busy and the journey take far more than the
usual hour.  However, the road was clear and I got home in fine style.
I made a fuss of Polly-Hodge and fed her, and then took the bus to
Marble Arch, walked down Park Lane and joined the Countryside March as
it entered Hyde Park.  Park Lane was closed, and it was strange to have
the road almost entirely to myself.  I walked through the barriers to
join the marchers and immediately found myself hailed by Margaret
Clayton, who was my last Assistant Secretary when I worked at the Home
Office.  She had retired early and was now working part-time for six
days a week and obviously happy.  She moved quickly on to join her
friends before the march ended on the road just north of the Albert
Memorial.

A large barrier slung across the path with the word "Finish" on it
was'a slight anticlimax, but I could understand why the organizers had
decided against speeches.  The marchers are united in their support of
the countryside and those who live and work in it, but I doubt whether
large landowners and small tenant farmers have a great deal in common,
or that all the marchers care greatly about fox-hunting.  I wouldn't
wish to hunt myself; this is mainly because, even if I were young,
strong and able to ride, it wouldn't seem to me an activity worth
risking my neck for.  But I am sure the fox suffers less from the
hounds' jaws at the end of a hunt than by shooting or the horror of
poisoning, and it seems irrational to ban hunting while permitting
fishing or tolerating the conditions under which our eggs are
produced.

It was a wonderfully diverse group of people: a tall corduroy-suited
elderly man who looked like the stage stereotype of an irascible
colonel striding along alone, groups of the young chatting or singing
as they

March 1998 165

walked, middle-aged ladies who were obviously stalwart upholders of the
WI, and agricultural workers who marched with a kind of rugged
determination in support of their livelihoods.  No one dropped
litter.

My walk home along the Bayswater Road was made interesting by the
pictures on the park railings.  They are an odd mixture.  Some of the
watercolours, particularly of flowers, have an attractive spontaneity
and freshness and in all I saw three pictures which I would have been
reasonably happy to see on my walls.  But most are awful, although the
non representational art didn't seem worse than some examples I've seen
in prestigious galleries.  I suppose it's a matter of taste.  I liked
the little autobiographies and critical notes and extracts from
magazines which are pinned up by some of the paintings.  Obviously
those painters are managing to make a living, and good luck to them.  I
would much rather buy a picture from these railings than a
reproduction.  I did in fact find a very agreeable scene of Dover
Cliffs some years ago which I still enjoy.

St.  David's Day always reminds me of my first day at the Home Office.
I was being taken on the usual short induction tour of departments and
had arrived in the Home Secretary's private office.  James Callaghan
was Home Secretary at the time and the outer office was piled high with
daffodils sent to him by his constituents.  The office was busy and it
was hard to reconcile this controlled activity with the overwhelming
smell of spring flowers.  Thus, incongruously, I began the last stage
of my working life as a bureaucrat.

I learned early to cope with parliamentary questions, those regular
minor irritants which fell on to the desk in the form of lurid yellow
folders.

I had to provide background notes about the MP and his preoccupations
and the possible reason for the question, provide an answer and then
follow up with pages of notes for supplementaries.  This was the most
difficult part of the exercise.  The object was to ensure that the
Secretary of State or Minister was never left without a readily
accessible answer to any supplementary question that the Member might
choose to ask.  Apart from the Forensic Science Service and Forensic
Pathologists, I was also given responsibility for police vehicles. When
I protested I couldn't even drive, my Assistant Secretary said that
made me eminently suitable for the task.

By chance my first PQ was from an MP who asked for details of every
make of vehicle held by all the police forces in England and Wales. The
draft reply I put up said this information would be of no possible
public use.  My Assistant Secretary gently pointed out that there was a
form of words to provide for questions where the cost of obtaining the
information would be disproportionate to its use, but that I hadn't hit
on it.

I received no period of formal training but occasional miscellaneous
advice, the most important being never to use a green ballpoint, since
green was the prerogative of Sir Philip Allen, the head of the
office.

Despite some initial stress, I enjoyed my time at the Home Office.  It
is a department where ministers' reputations are more easily lost than
gained.  The department is inured to receiving a critical press, being
seen as draconian, illiberal and dilatory, but I left with a respect
for the integrity and intelligence of the senior officers with whom I
worked.

It was while I was in the Police Department that I wrote my first work
of nonfiction, in cooperation with the Assistant Secretary, Tom
Critchley.  The Maul and the Pear Tree (published in 1971) deals with a
series of notorious and brutal murders in Wapping in 1811, referred to
usually as the Ratcliffe Highway Murders.  The first victims were
twenty four-year-old Timothy Marr, a linen draper on the Highway, his
wife Celia, their three-and-a-half-month-old baby son Timothy, and
their apprentice boy, James Gowen.  It was a Saturday, yth December
1811, and the shop remained open until eight.  A little before
midnight, Timothy Marr called to his servant girl, Margaret Jewell,
gave her a pound and sent her out to pay the baker's bill and to buy
some oysters.  She found the baker's shop closed, went to another place
to try to buy the oysters but again was unsuccessful.  After about
twenty minutes she returned home to find the door shut tightly against
her and the shop in darkness.

Thinking that the family might have gone to bed, she pulled the bell,
the jangling seeming unnaturally loud in the quiet street.  And
listening, she heard a sound that gave her the comforting assurance
that Marr or his wife would soon be opening the door.  There was a soft
tread of footsteps on the stairs.  But no one came.  The footsteps
ceased and again there was silence.

The clanging of the bell and the girl kicking the door aroused the
interest of a night watchman and then the neighbour, John Murray.  He
told the watchman to continue pulling hard at the bell and he would go
into his back yard and see if he could rouse the family from the back
of the house.  The back door was open and he made his way inside by a
light from a candle burning on the landing of the first floor.

In the shop he found the first body, the apprentice boy James Gowen,
with the bones of his face shattered by blow after blow.  With a
groan,

March 1998 167

Murray stumbled towards the door and found his path blocked by the body
of Mrs.  Marr, blood still draining from her battered head.  Murray
opened the front door and screamed his news incoherently, "Murder!

Murder!"  and the small crowd, swollen by the arrival of neighbours,
pressed into the shop.  The air was loud with groans and cries.  They
found the body of the child still in its cradle, the side of its mouth
laid open with a blow, the left side of the face battered and the
throat slit so that the head was almost severed from the body.  And
behind the counter, lying face downwards, was the body of Timothy
Marr.

But that wasn't the end of horror.  Twelve days later, and in the next
parish, a blameless middle-aged publican, Mr.  Williamson of the King's
Arms in New Gavel Lane, Shadwell, his wife and their maidservant were
murdered with equal brutality.

The crimes provoked nationwide panic.  The government offered an
unprecedented reward for the conviction of the murderers, while there
was a vigorous and persistent demand for the reform of the police.  The
Prime Minister himself speculated on the crimes in the House of Commons
while Sheridan made a characteristically witty and trenchant attack on
the incompetence of the investigation.  De Quincey was powerfully
interested in the murders and years later they inspired his essay on
"Murder Considered as One of the Fine Arts."

Both Tom and I were fascinated by the setting as we were by the
investigation of the crime.  In 1811 the Port of London was the
greatest port in the world.  Every year 13,000 vessels from all parts
of the world dropped anchor.  The great vessels of the East India
Company, bulky and formidable as men-of-war, bearing cargoes of tea,
drugs, muslin, calicoes, spices and indigo, colliers from Newcastle,
whalers from Greenland, coastal vessels, packets, brigs, lighters,
barges, ferries and dinghies.

The parishioners of Wapping lived their lives against a constant
accompaniment of river sounds.  It was from the bustling trade of the
river that nearly all the inhabitants, rich and poor, drew their life:
stevedores, water men suppliers of rope and tackle, ships' bakers,
marine store dealers, instrument makers, boat builders, laundresses who
lived by taking in the sailors' washing, carpenters to repair the
ships, rat catchers and the keepers of cheap houses where the seamen
lodged.

What was fascinating to me was the investigation.  It was
extraordinarily incompetent.  The various authorities--the river
police, the night watchmen, the magistrates of Shadwell and those of
Wapping--were more concerned to guard their own reputations and
functions than to cooperate effectively.  The end of the case was as
macabre as the beginning.

A young seaman, John Williams, was arrested for the crime but was found
dead in prison, apparently by his own hand.  His decaying corpse was
paraded through the streets of East London to be buried at a crossroads
with a stake through its heart.  This was an act of public vengeance
unique in the history of English criminal law.

The case came to Tom Critchley's attention when he was writing his
history of the police in England and Wales, but when he mentioned it to
me I remembered that I had read an account in the Newgate Calendar and
had been very far from convinced of the guilt of John Williams.

Accordingly, we sent for as many papers as we could find and started
our investigations, arriving at a conclusion which cannot now possibly
be proved but which seems far more logical and credible than Williams's
guilt.  His conviction was certainly expedient.  There was a tacit
agreement among the authorities that the Ratcliffe Highway affair
should be allowed to fade from the public mind.  Whether Williams was
an accomplice, whether he died by his own hand or was murdered by those
who wanted to ensure their own safety, it seems likely that the body
which was buried with ignominy at the crossroads of St.  George's
Turnpike was the body of an eighth victim.

MONDAY, 2ND MARCH

The Committee of Management of the Whitbread Literary Awards met at 12
o'clock in Chiswell Street.  I was full of a sensible resolution to
take the Tube from Netting Hill Gate to the Barbican rather than get
embroiled in traffic, but then decided against it and took a cab.  I
was glad I did when the cabbie drove into the park between tossing
daffodils and bright patches of purple crocuses.  On the Mall fortress
the matted creeper, like a brown tufted rug, was falling from the wall
in great swathes.

After the working lunch I travelled from the Barbican to Westminster
and arrived in the House of Lords at about 3:30 for the debate on the
report stage of the Teaching and Higher Education Bill.  We won a
victory on Amendment 50, moved by Emily Blatch, to restore grants, and
again on the Amendment providing that English students at Scottish

March 1998 169

universities shall not be required to pay for the fourth year.  At
present only Scottish students and those from overseas are exempt.
Tessa Blackstone argued that the first year at Scottish universities is
the equivalent of the final year of upper school in the rest of the UK,
and that it is reasonable, therefore, for students other than those
educated in Scotland to enter at the second year and complete their
degree in three years.  But it is unjust and, indeed, ridiculous that a
student at Edinburgh University who lives in Belfast will pay 4,000 for
his course and one from Dublin will pay 3,000, one from Manchester will
pay for the extra year but the one from Munich gets it free.  Both
Lords' Amendments will, of course, be lost in the Commons, but at least
the Lower House will have to debate it again.

We were less successful in amending Clause 18 of the Bill designed to
reduce the powers of the universities.  I wanted very much to speak but
lost my chance; by the time I had got the words ready, Tessa Blackstone
was on her feet to answer the points made in the debate.  I shall have
to be much quicker if I am to have a chance of asking a supplementary
question.

WEDNESDAY, 4TH MARCH

I had my hair done this morning at 9:15 and then went to Goldsmiths'
Hall for the W. H. Smith Literary Award ceremony, which was due to
begin at half-past twelve.  It is, of course, considerably smaller than
the Whitbread or the Booker, but it is usually agreeable since I can be
sure of seeing friends.  The prize was won by Ted Hughes for his
translation of Ovid, the third time this book has been a prize-winner.
He wasn't able to be present but had written a short speech which
Joanna Mackle delivered.

I had the publisher John Murray on my left, who proved to be an
entertaining luncheon companion.  We talked about the poetry of our
youth and happily recited together snatches of verse from old
favourites, congratulating ourselves that we were at school before the
arrival of political correctness.

Children should be exposed to a large variety of verse and should be
encouraged to learn their favourites by heart, not the ones thought
suitable for them by teachers or parents.  I can remember at a seminar
I attended on

the teaching of English being shown an anthology issued to schools as
suitable for teenagers.  Not surprisingly, it included Wordsworth's
"Daffodils."

This is a poem essentially for adults.  Children do not often lie upon
their couch "in vacant or in pensive mood" or, if they do, are unlikely
to be thinking about flowers and are liable to be rapidly booted off
the couch by their parents.  One of the consolations of old age is the
intense pleasure I now get from nature.  It seems that in youth I was
too busy confronting life and experience to stand still and gaze.  I
don't doubt that children should be encouraged in this pleasure, but I
doubt whether they will learn it from Wordsworth's "Daffodils."

John Murray said that he had compiled a small personal anthology of the
poems he had learned by heart in youth and would send me a copy.

WEDNESDAY, 11TH MARCH

Yesterday two young women came to interview me for a Norwegian
magazine, one to do the actual interview and the other to take
photographs.

It was difficult to fit them in and I was only able to spare one hour,
but inevitably the photography went overtime, as it always does.

Then in the afternoon to the House of Lords for a continuation of the
Education Bill, which finished its report stage.  I stayed until 11:15
p.m."  but after that, knowing I had an early start tomorrow, went
home, confident that there would in any case be no further divisions.

This morning I caught a train at Liverpool Street station to
Colchester, where I was met and taken to speak at a luncheon in aid of
the Essex Autistic Society.  The other speaker was Barbara Erskine, who
writes Gothic novels set in exciting mood-inducing old houses
occasionally peopled by a ghost.  She lives, apparently, in just such a
house herself and her talk after lunch was mostly about ghosts,
including the one which haunts her own house.

She had an interested audience.  I have seen no convincing evidence
that ghosts exist, but most of us would like to believe that one or two
may occasionally put in an appearance.  Barbara Erskine seemed quite
happy with her obviously benign apparition.  Ghosts have no place in
detective fiction, which is essentially a rational form.  I can still
experience a fris son when I reread M. R. James, particularly his "Oh,
Whistle,

March 1998 171

and I'll Come to You, My Lad."  The genre, if one can appropriately use
that word, is less popular today; Kingsley Amis has written probably
the best modern ghost novel with The Green Man.  But for me the most
terrifying ghost story is Henry James's The Turn of the Screw.

I first came to this story in adolescence and found it a more
disturbing work even than Dr.  Jekyll and Mr.  Hyde or The Picture of
Dorian Gray.  I remember that, even then, I attempted to apply to it
the rationality of detective fiction and conceived the idea that it was
the children, Miles and Flora, who were the evil instigators.  Perhaps,
I reasoned, they had discovered the love affair between Quint and Miss
Jessel and were blackmailing these vulnerable subordinates into obeying
their every whim, eventually driving Miss Jessel away to suicide.  The
ghosts appear, not to reclaim the children, but to warn the new
governess.  I am loath to relinquish my interpretation, but the plot
can't really bear the weight of it; nor am I convinced that the
governess was a deluded sexually repressed neurotic.  If we accept that
the narrator is honest, then we must also accept that the governess is
sane since he states that he knew her years after the event, that she
was his sister's governess and that he considers her to be the most
agreeable woman he had ever known in that position.  I think we must
also accept that the housekeeper, Mrs.  Grose, is a reliable witness
and that she disliked Quint and saw him as evil.  But were the ghosts
genuine apparitions or the product of the governess's overwrought
imagination?  I think we must accept that they were more than a morbid
preoccupation with Quint since she sees him on the roof of the house
before she knows from Mrs.  Grose of his existence.

For me the story is about the moral ambiguity of physical beauty and
its seductive power to subvert moral judgement.  It is also about
responsibility, or the lack of it.  The uncle is the most
irresponsible, using his authority and charm to relieve himself of any
involvement in the lives of his small charges.  The governess, beguiled
both by his attractiveness and his flattering confidence in her,
accepts a charge which she must have known was beyond her capabilities,
and doesn't even notify him when Miles is expelled from school.  She
puts her standing with her employer before her duty to the children.
Both the governess and Mrs.  Grose are so enchanted by the Botticelli
angelic beauty of Miles and Flora that they find it difficult to
believe them capable of wrongdoing, let alone evil.  Henry James was
right to make the children exceptionally beautiful, striking at our
preconceived notions of the physical manifestations of evil.  The
wicked witch is always dark and ugly.

And how exactly were the children corrupted?  Henry James could not, of
course, be specific.  The story is overlaid with such Victorian
preoccupations as childhood sexuality, the ambivalent position of the
governess in the home and in society, and their fascination with the
supernatural.  Coming to the story afresh, I am surprised at its
enduring power to puzzle and discomfort.  Beside it, James's short
ghost stories' Owen Wingrave,"

"Sir Edmund Ome" and "The Friends of the Friends"--are no more than
tales to frighten children.

My visit to Essex was an enjoyable occasion and for a very good cause
which I was glad to be able to help.  I feel desperately sorry for
parents with autistic children.  It is hard enough to cope with
physical disability but to have a child who is mentally remote,
inaccessible, and may indeed be belligerent and incapable of responding
to love, must be very difficult to bear.  The day was overcast but the
countryside still looked beautiful seen through a soft mist, the
wayside daffodils sharply yellow against the muted green of the
grass.

SATURDAY, I4TH MARCH

Yesterday I went to Stockport to speak at a dinner organized by the
Patrons' Club of the Altrincham and Sale Conservative Association.  I
decided to save them money by travelling standard class, but began to
regret it when the carriage became full and the seats close by were
taken by four young men each carrying four linked cans of beer.  They
became increasingly noisy as the journey proceeded and more and more
beer was fetched from the buffet.  After that at least three other
passengers began using their mobile phones, so that the hope of a
peaceful journey, with time to look at the countryside (though not
particularly interesting, I admit, on this journey) and to think, was
lost.  But then I overheard some of the young men's conversation with a
neighbouring passenger, and realized that they were four squad dies
returning from a tour of duty in Northern Ireland.  Immediately the
noise they were making seemed both excusable and, for my part,
supportable.

It was a much more comfortable journey back today, leaving me plenty of
energy to walk down to Kensington High Street to shop.  I went into the
Roman Catholic church in Kensington Church Street,

March 1998 173

feeling the need to light some candles for friends who are ill, and
also to rest for a moment and sit quietly.  Preparations were being
made for a wedding.  Already the best man and some of the ushers,
wearing morning dress, had arrived, someone was making last-minute
rearrangements to the flowers and there was that quiet determined air
of purposeful activity which is surprisingly restful if one is able to
sit apart from it.  The building for me has no architectural merit, but
it is a wonderful staging post on the walk down to the High Street
since it is always open and one can sit in solitude without
disturbance.  I need moments of absolute quiet and stillness, and
churches are among the few places where one can find them.

SUNDAY, I5TH MARCH

This morning I went to Mattins at the Chapel Royal, St.  James's
Palace, with Miss Ellen Lowe.  I met her two years ago in the local
hairdresser's, but I have seen her fairly frequently since as we
usually stand at the same bus-stop on Sunday mornings to go to church.
She asked me if I would accompany her one day to the Chapel Royal, and
this was the day.

We took a cab, since it conveniently arrived, which made us rather
early, so we walked for fifteen minutes in St.  James's Park.  I never
get tired of the view from the bridge towards Whitehall, seen this
morning through a white flutter of seagulls' wings.  A plaque outside
the Chapel stated that it was here that Charles I had received
Communion for the last time before his execution.  Before the service I
sat quietly, thinking-I hope prayerfully--of that tragic king who paid
so dearly for his obstinacy and folly.  He now has a day in the revised
lectionary, which seems to me entirely right.  The Chapel was very
full, and I enjoyed the quiet dignity of Mattins, now so seldom heard.
The anthem, Parry's "My Soul, There Is a Country," is one of my
favourites.  It was helpful to find myself provided with a large Prayer
Book I could easily read from a distance, and a comfortable hassock for
kneeling.

Afterwards we had lunch together at II Carretto, an Italian restaurant
at Notting Hill Gate, where I enjoyed hearing about Miss Lowe's
experience as a nurse at the Middlesex Hospital.  Hers has been a life
of quiet, determined dedication to a job she obviously loved.  The
hours were nor174

mally long and frequently nurses would stay overtime, as they still
do.

"After all," she said simply, "if the patient needs you, you can't just
walk away."

To David Hebblethwaite's flat in Powis Square in the evening for
supper.

The other guest was Sir Derek Pattinson, Secretary-General of the
General Synod of the Church of England from 1972 to 1990.  It was a
aood evening but one I had to cut a little short as I needed to be home
oo at half-past ten when son-in-law Peter arrived to spend the night.

THURSDAY, I9TH MARCH

This morning I returned from three happy, if busy, days in Cambridge.

On Monday morning I gave the Keynote Speech at a conference on "Sexing
the Liturgy" held at the university's Faculty of Divinity in St.

John Street.  I thought the title a little odd; I associate sexing with
chickens.

Perhaps "Liturgy and Gender" would have been more appropriate.

It was an interesting three days, and educative for me, but I would
have benefited more had the acoustics in the large barrel-roofed hall
been better.

The sound system seemed to amplify but also to distort, although I
accept that my hearing isn't good.  The noise level seemed loud but
individual words were lost.  This made it particularly difficult since
some of the young female theologians spoke very quickly, rather as if
they were reading a dissertation or thesis and had to get through it in
the time.  The proceedings will be printed and I shall then have an
opportunity to read and, I hope, learn and digest.

I don't suppose anyone was surprised at the stance I took in my Keynote
Speech.  I reviewed what I saw as the desiderata of liturgy: that it
should be intelligible, which didn't necessarily mean that it should be
modern and up-to-date; that it should be capable of being spoken aloud
in church by priest and people; that it should reflect doctrine; and
lastly, but not least important, that it should be written in memorable
language.

Words in their beauty, their simplicity, their numinous power should be
capable of so entering our consciousness that we do not need to
remember them, search for them or concentrate on them, but rest
confidently on their familiarity to bring us into that hoped-for
communion with God which is surely at the heart of prayer and
worship.

March 1998 175

I went on, perhaps rather late in the talk, to speak about gender and
worship.  I pointed out that Christianity is both an historical and a
patriarchal religion.  It was a Jewish patriarch, St.  Paul, who was
chiefly responsible for extending the Judeo-Christian inheritance to
non-Jews.  Christ Himself taught us to call God "Abba, Father."  I see
a difficulty, at least for myself, in accepting such changes as
"Mother" or "Sister."  This is surely to substitute one stereotype for
another; since God is spirit He can have no gender.  Even as a young
child I never pictured God as a benevolent Father Christmas sitting in
a white nightdress on a heavenly throne.

Between lectures I looked at some of the theological books on sale in
the hall.  Most seemed to me totally incomprehensible.  Obviously
doctrinally and philosophically they would be well above my
understanding, but it seemed that the sentences themselves were
incomprehensible, a string of polysyllabic words strung together from
which I could get no meaning.  Theology like other professions has its
own obscurantism.  The problem is surely that theology should impinge
on the lives of ordinary non-theologians if it is to have influence.
Surely it can sometimes be written in language the intelligent lay man
or woman can understand.

One of the women priests to whom I spoke is a hospital chaplain.  She
said that on a recent visit to the wards she had been accosted by a
woman who had said, with extreme anger, "Don't talk to me about the
Church of England!  Why did it have to snatch away Princess Di just
when she was enjoying her bit of happiness?"  I don't know what answer
the priest gave; I could think of none appropriate.

After lunch at Trinity I walked and talked in the Fellows' garden with
the Professor of Divinity, the happiest time of my visit.  Inevitably I
thought of George Eliot, pacing between the trees in the same garden
with a contemporary writer, F. W. H. Myers, and pronouncing on the
words God, Immortality, Duty.

"How inconceivable was the first, how unbelievable the second, and yet
how peremptory and absolute the third."

I spent the night in the guest room at Peterhouse.  This is an
eccentric room.  It was given to the college by an ex-member, and I
suspect that he had something to do with the furnishing.  The stairway
leading up to the room is a rather disagreeable and violent
purplish-red, with an immense coat of arms facing the door.  The guest
room itself is large, the bed high and curtained with a gold canopy
surmounted by two huge crossed keys.

The furniture is gilded, and in the bathroom a vast bath has a wide rim
as if designed for the bather's friends to sit round comfortably and
chat.

Four lit res of bottled water were provided, suggesting that the
extraordinary decorations might induce excessive thirst.  But it was a
comfortable night.

In the morning, by contrast, I had breakfast in the little parlour, in
the oldest part of the college.  This is an enchanting room,
half-panelled and looking out over the lawns and trees, and with a
small combination room next door where senior members of the college
can relax and read.

It was one of those rooms which promote an atmosphere of tranquil
meditative happiness and I wished I could spend the day there and
write.

Afterwards two other guests, a speaker at the conference and her
husband, and I were shown the Perne Library and able to examine some of
the college treasures.  These include a very early printed book which
was obviously designed to deceive the buyer since the printer's name
had been carefully erased.  It was beautifully decorated and the print
remarkably clear, a fake but still a work of art.  The young College
Chaplain, Graham Ward, then took me to see the Chapel.  The east
window, designed by Rubens, is remarkable.  Beneath a turbulent sky, a
boiling of vivid blue, the figures round the three crosses are crowded
together, yet each individual, the two robbers distorted in agony, the
figure of Christ, passive and luminous, in the centre of the picture.
The window is violent and restless, forcing the viewer to face the
reality of what is happening.

SUNDAY, 29TH MARCH

I am writing this just before 11 o'clock at night after what has been
an enjoyably fulfilling weekend.  It began on Friday with a pub lunch
with Bud McLintock.  Bud's firm is responsible for the publicity in
connection with the Whitbread Awards, one of the most interesting and
successful of the literary prizes.  She has hopes that the BBC might do
a programme about it and we discussed the possibilities.  I don't think
television has ever managed to cope successfully with literary prizes.
Viewers on the whole probably aren't interested in shots of
dinner-jacketed guests eating and drinking en masse, or in the
speeches.  But it should be possible to discuss the shortlist in a way
that is both interesting and informative.  I think viewers and
listeners particularly like to hear from

March 1998 177

the authors themselves--how they get their ideas, how the book began,
what are their methods of writing.  It will be good if the Whitbread
can be given more publicity on the screen.

Jane arrived in the early evening to spend the weekend.  She needed to
order some blinds for her Oxford house, so we went first to John Lewis
and then walked to the Wallace Collection.  I hadn't been to the
Wallace for over a year, but entered it as I always do with a sense of
being received into a private house as a welcome visitor.  It is
interesting how one's response to some paintings changes while the
initial reaction to others is only deepened with every viewing.
Titian's air-sea rescue of Andromeda, which once I thought rather fine,
now seems to me half finished and almost slovenly, while I can never
view the Guardis without pleasure, and I particularly love the
Bonington oils and watercolours.  I received more pleasure--and Jane
more amusement--from the armour than I expected, particularly the
jousting armour.  I tried to imagine the sensation of being screwed
into this ornate and cunningly hinged accoutrement designed, judging by
the bizarre pointed helmets, to terrify as much as to protect.  I can
see that, once dislodged from the saddle, the jouster would lie
helpless, a gigantic upended beetle.

We read the notice describing the additions planned as a result of the
successful application to the Lottery.  There is to be a learning
centre and also a coffee house for visitors under a glass canopy in the
courtyard.  Jane and I disagreed about this.  Perhaps because of my
age, I am always thankful for a place where I can sit and drink coffee
after visiting a museum.

Jane dislikes the idea of museums--and in particular
galleries--becoming places where people will congregate to meet
friends, eat, drink and chat.  A purist, she prefers to think that
visitors are drawn by one need only: to look at the pictures in comfort
and relative solitude.  I don't see why they shouldn't, afterwards, be
refreshed with a good cup of coffee.

This morning we went to 11 o'clock Mass at All Saints--or it would be
more apt to say that that was our intention.  Because we hadn't
listened to the radio or read the papers in detail, I had completely
overlooked putting forward the clock by one hour.  We got to the
church, as we thought, early and wandered around to kill time, then
presented ourselves at the firmly closed door at quarter to twelve,
thinking it was quarter to eleven.  Opening the door, I saw that the
church was very full.  My instinct was to leave, but Jane, more robust,
was determined that, having decided to go to church, to church she
would go, and we were shown to

a seat in a side aisle.  Afterwards I was very glad that we did go in.
I was in time to take Communion, and Jane, who is not a believer,
greatly enjoyed, as did I, the singing of Byrd's four-part setting of
the Mass.

Afterwards we walked to Regent's Park and made our way eventually to
the restaurant, where we had a light lunch sitting outside.  Although
the sun was fitful, the air was warm and moist.  Just to breathe,
particularly in this green and flower-scented place, was a sensual
pleasure.

Each of London's three main public parks has its distinctive
ambience.

St.  James's Park is the one I know best, perhaps because I so often
walked across it during the years when I worked at the Home Office.

Stretching in green and watery beauty between the Palace and Whitehall,
St.  James's has always held for me an air of regal propriety and of
high policy tinged with mystery.  There have been so many espionage TV
series in which bowler-hatted men of power pace magisterially together
beside the lake exchanging their dangerous confidences.  The very birds
seem to know themselves privileged.

Regent's Park is more formally splendid with wide paths leading to
Queen Mary's Rose Garden or the zoo; a less intimate park and one for
people intent on going somewhere, pausing less often than in other
parks to sniff, touch and wonder.

Hyde Park is redolent of high Victoriana (perhaps because of Kensington
Palace), peopled with the small ghosts of supervised children sailing
their boats on the round pond while beribboned nurses wheel
deep-bottomed bassinets between the flowerbeds of Kensington Gardens.

The particular pleasure of Hyde Park lies in the vast acres of grass.

Here I can walk for miles in untrammelled solitude, the perfect place
to be when I am plotting a new novel.

After we reached home, Jane went out again into Holland Park, reluctant
to miss the rest of the daylight, while I sat with the Sunday papers.
Jane left to catch the bus to Oxford shortly before ten, so now I am
sitting alone in that state of indolent tiredness in which the
contemplation of sleep becomes more agreeable than making the effort
actually to go to bed.

Tomorrow I leave London by the 10 a.m. train from King's Cross to
Edinburgh, where I am to give a lecture to the Scottish MedicoLegal
Society.

April

WEDNESDAY, 1ST APRIL 1998

Today is the anniversary of my husband's birthday and inevitably it is
a day for memory to take hold.  It was an unpropitious day to be born,
provoking in childhood the inevitable jokes and teasing.  Connor would
have been seventy-eight today and I am trying to picture him, like me
stiffer in his walk, his strong fair hair now a thatch of grey.  I know
that he was glad to die and I never mourned him in the sense of wishing
that it had not happened.  I still miss him daily, which means that no
day goes by in which he doesn't enter into my mind: a sight which he
would have relished, a joke which he would have enjoyed, something seen
or read which could be shared with him, the reiteration of familiar
gossip, opinions, prejudices, which are part of a marriage.  And then
there is the success and prosperity in which he never shared and which
could have made such a difference to his comfort, and the grandchildren
he longed to see but never did.

For much of his last years he was in and out of psychiatric hospitals,
chiefly Goodmayes in Essex.  It was, indeed still is, one of those
impressive and forbidding Victorian edifices which, during my
childhood, were called asylums.  The word is beautiful, as is its
meaning, but it was spoken then always with that mixture of fear and
shame associated with the word "workhouse."  These large communities
for the care of the mentally ill have, of course, been largely
superseded by community care, which could be described more accurately
as the absence of care in a community still largely resentful or
frightened of mental illness.  Connor was never unhappy in Goodmayes
but then, as he said, education at a minor public school and subsequent
army service prepared one for anything.

For him and for very many, particularly those who could not possibly
have survived outside, it was indeed an asylum.

I was living at the time with his parents in Ilford, where my father-in
law was still working as a general practitioner.  Every Sunday I would
take the bus to the end of Goodmayes Lane and join the straggling
stream of dispirited-looking men, women and children trudging up the
driveway to the hospital.  It was too reminiscent of similar journeys
to a similar hospital taken in childhood with my father.  All the
visitors would be carrying baskets or bags containing the weekly
offering of food.  I usually carried fruit and a cake baked by my
mother-in-law, in addition to cigarettes, any book I thought Connor
might enjoy and pocket money to see him through the week.  We would
meet in one of the large day-rooms smelling as always of inadequately
washed bodies and furniture polish.  If the weather was fine we would
walk in the grounds.  The wards were large and barrack-like with small
padded side-wards in which patients had occasionally to be
incarcerated.  Many of the modern drugs had not been developed and
patients saw psychiatrists only infrequently.  For many of them, the
burnt-out schizophrenics, there was in fact little that could be done
medically, but here at least they did find an asylum.  Sometimes the
care might have been a little rough and ready, but on my frequent
visits I saw no unkindness--and much compassionate and sensitive
caring.

I got to recognize the other visitors, since we went week after week.

One, a very large woman, with a son built like a rugby player and
ferocious in when, took him a cooked meal for each day of the week in a
series of heaped metal containers.  She confided to me when we walked
together up the drive: "George has been reclassified.  He's a voluntary
patient now.  Mind you, we're not telling him!"

The hospital was a place where eccentricities and bizarre behaviour
were tolerated as they rarely are with community care.  I went once
with Connor to a church service where the chaplain was in no way put
out by the fact that a third of the congregation took the high kneeling
hassocks and placed them on the pews so that the congregation looked as
if it contained a proportion of formidable giants.

Connor, on admission, had decided to call himself Ted, and I got used
to hearing him addressed by nurses and patients by that name.  For some
time he worked in the library but also captained the soccer team.  I
don't know whether any games were played away, but those on the home
ground had their moments of eccentricity.  Connor was not pleased when,
during one game, the goalkeeper began hearing his voices and stood
immobile, eyes raised to heaven, while the ball whizzed past him into
goal.

Only those who have lived with the mental illness of someone they love
can understand what this entails.  One suffers with the patient and for
oneself.  Another human being who was once a beloved companion

April 1998 181

can become not only a stranger, but occasionally a malevolent
stranger.

It is easy sometimes to understand why mental illness was once seen as
possession by an evil spirit.  But at least I was spared the theory
which some psychiatrists subsequently developed: that it was the family
members who were ill, the patient who was sane, and that the family,
particularly the parents, were responsible for the sickness.  This
theory is so cruel and wicked--I use the words with care--that it
should surely never be put forward unless there is proof of its truth
and something can be done about it.  The additional burden this placed
on parents, already trying to cope with little support with an
intolerable burden, was frankly appalling.  I suppose it principally
arose from the psychiatrists' need to relate emotionally to the
patient.  But too often it seemed a collusion;

parents, in addition to being regarded as the cause of the illness,
were denied information about its progress.  I know of one case where a
schizophrenic son subsequently drowned himself but the hospital at
which he was a patient didn't know that he was no longer in his room,
since to enter it would have been a violation of his privacy.

The policy of treatment in the community, which began when I was
working at the North West Metropolitan Regional Hospital Board and was
enthusiastically implemented, has immeasurably increased the burden on
families, many of whom live under a pressing cloud of daily anxiety
which must at times seem insupportable.  When will we learn not to
legislate for, or introduce, so-called reforms unless and until we have
the will and the means to finance them?  Depressing as the old
psychiatric hospitals were, at least they provided respite for the
family, and control, care and support for the patient.  If there is to
be community care, there should also be small local in-patient and
out-patient facilities to which patients can return in moments of
crisis or when they have neglected to take their medication, and to
which carers in the community can look for support and help.  It might
be necessary to have short-term compulsory orders to ensure that
patients who won't return to in-patient care voluntarily can be
admitted until they are stabilized.  But one would hope that these
small units--I hate the word, but "hospital" hardly seems
appropriate--can be attractive and welcoming and seen by the patients
as true asylums.  I suspect that there are many thousands of parents,
wives, husbands, children coping with the mentally ill, in
circumstances which no one should be asked to endure.  It is surprising
they are not more vocal, but it is difficult to criticize the system
when the system is all you have, and to antagonize it might take away
even the inadequate support which you at present receive.

I remember watching with my younger daughter a programme on the
television in which a team of psychiatrists and social workers were in
session with the family of a schizophrenic boy, indulging in some kind
of family therapy.  I felt outraged at the intrusion.  What exactly,
anyway, is a normal family?  There can be few in which the
relationships are without tension or even occasional acrimony, or in
which some unhappiness is not endured.  By what right have these
outsiders, these experts, come in to meddle in other people's lives
when, in reality, they have so little to offer?  At least I never had
to endure that kind of intrusion.  It is an injustice about which,
perhaps not surprisingly, I can become vehement.

THURSDAY, 2ND APRIL

I am writing this on the train from Edinburgh to King's Cross,
following my address to the Scottish Medico-Legal Society.  The
carriage is almost empty and I'm enjoying what I like best, a quiet
uninterrupted journey.

At York a man got in and immediately began using his mobile
telephone.

I had a horrible fear that this was the end of peace, but he made only
the single call.  One would like to see carriages set aside for people
who want to conduct their business in loud voices throughout a journey,
but I am always reluctant to add to prohibitions.  Perhaps it's better
to have notices asking people to use mobile phones only when standing
in the corridor or between compartments.  That might get the message
over that this is not an acceptable practice.

The first part of this journey is the most exciting; rugged coastline
before and after Berwick, the wild sea rolling in over jagged rocks,
and the first gorse, bright yellow on the headlands.  Then the Tweed,
flowing under the last bridge to merge with the sea at Berwick.  We are
now in calmer country and the weather has changed from dull to rainy;
raindrops, like silver tadpoles, weaving and spurting down the panes.
The north seems to be painted boldly in dark oils, the south in
watercolours.

But now the blurred countryside is seen as a pointilliste painting, the
fields as yet only smudged with the acid yellow of the rape.

It has been an enjoyable visit.  Edinburgh is a splendid city, but one
in which a southerner will always feel a stranger, even if--as on this
occasion --a welcome stranger.  It offers that greatest of city
delights, the

April 1998 183

unexpected glimpse down narrow roadways or cobbled passages of
glittering water and far hills.

Grandson James met me off the train yesterday and drove me south to
walk on a wide, firm and deserted beach before dropping me at my hotel.
This was The Witchery, snuggling down under the castle.  It is
primarily a restaurant with only two rooms for visitors, one a suite
called the Inner Sanctum.  This was furnished almost exactly as it
would have been for a Victorian visitor and his wife.  It looked like a
theatre set that was in danger of overpowering the action.  Here,
artfully arranged, was high Victorian clutter, a large bronze head of
the Queen presiding over more artefacts than one would find in a row of
antique shops.  The nineteenth-century travelling couple would be
ushered into a room in which they would feel immediately at home,
indeed their luggage is already here: leather suitcases, tartan rugs,
an officer's red jacket arranged on a stand.  The large sitting-room
has tartan rugs as well as a tartan carpet.

Both rooms are crowded with family pictures in silver frames,
sentimental coloured prints, an open photograph album on a stand, large
floral arrangements, innumerable knickknacks crowding every surface.

The bedroom is dominated by a high, wide four-poster bed with a scarlet
canopy and eight huge tapestry or embroidered cushions.  All this
brilliantly arranged reconstruction of another age was combined with
cleverly concealed modern conveniences: television, fax, telephones,
although the eight different taps in the bathroom could be more
properly described as a challenge rather than a convenience.  I suspect
that I shall one day use this room, or one very like it, in a novel.
The description of a room can be as revealing of character as dialogue
or action.

My lecture was held in the demonstration lecture hall of the School of
Medicine, a pleasantly proportioned semi-circular room with high,
ranked seats and a space in front of the speaker's desk obviously
intended to hold a postmortem table.  I was aware of its absence and
could picture an autopsy--perhaps on the victims of Burke and
Hare--being undertaken under the fascinated gaze of passers-by who had
walked in from the street to watch this demonstration of scientific
cleverness.  After the lecture, which could perhaps be more accurately
described as a talk, a small group of us had an excellent dinner at The
Witchery.  I enjoyed the company very much--forensic pathologists are
never dull--and I was seated next to a Procurator Fiscal and was able
to discuss some of the differences between Scottish and English law. He
is close to the Charge d'Instruction in France, and told me that during
a police investigation he

can ask for any information which he thinks would be helpful, including
information on the background of suspects or the defendant.  This means
that much more is known about the background and details of the case by
the time it comes to court than happens in England, probably resulting
in a higher level of convictions.  We talked about the "Not Proven"
verdict and agreed that Madeleine Smith, the twenty-one-year old
Glasgow architect's daughter tried in 1857 for the murder by arsenic of
her lover, Emile L'Angelier, would almost certainly have been found
guilty and hanged had she been tried south of the border.

This dinner conversation reminded me of the time during my service in
the Home Office when I was concerned with juvenile law and had to come
to a conference in Edinburgh to discuss the Scottish panel system as
opposed to the English and Welsh juvenile courts.  At first I thought
there were obvious advantages in dealing with children, particularly
younger children, in an informal setting where they face not a juvenile
magistrate but a panel of men and women experienced in child care who
discuss all the circumstances of the offence with the parents and who
arrive at a decision about what should be done.  But it later seemed to
me, as it still does, that the treatment model has its defects; in
particular there is a risk that the juvenile will be deprived of the
protection under the law which his elder brother would get if brought
before a court on, for example, a charge of grievous bodily harm.  The
panels at that time had the power to direct that the child could be
sent to a special school, and probably still have that power.  In other
words, a child is deprived of his or her liberty without the order of a
court of law.  This dichotomy between treatment and control under the
law seems to me at the heart of juvenile justice.  In the youth courts,
for example, the children have legal aid and the services of a
defending counsel.  This is absolutely right, yet there is the danger
that the child may learn from an early age that it is possible to get
off if you are represented by someone clever enough to establish
reasonable doubt.  G. K. Chesterton wrote, "Children, being honest,
love justice; adults, being corrupt, naturally prefer mercy."  What
children expect of any legal process is simple.  If you have done wrong
you will be punished; if you are not guilty, you will be

*A verdict of "Not Proven" is peculiar to Scottish law, where juries
have the choice of "Guilty,"

"Not Guilty," or "Not Proven."  The last usually means that there is
strong suspicion that the accused is guilty but the prosecution has not
proved its case beyond reasonable doubt.

April 1998 185

let off.  This is hardly commensurate with our present system of
criminal justice.

On the journey to Edinburgh, I read the whole of As If, Blake
Morrison's remarkable and personal response to the murder of James
Bulger by two ten-year-old boys.  It is a passionate and moving book,
the more so because the question "Why?"  was not answered by the court,
and could not be answered.  The court was convened to answer the two
questions "Did the boys know right from wrong?"  and "Were they the
ones responsible for the taking away and the beating to death of the
child?"

To these two questions it gave a reply.  But we have an insistent need
to know why, or at least we need to try to understand an act which in
its horror shook all our conceptions about the nature of childhood and
of innocence and indeed stretched the definition of evil into a new and
terrifying dimension.

I wonder how far very young children do understand right and wrong.
They know that certain actions will attract punishment, that they are
disapproved of by parents and teachers, and the more sophisticated may
know that they are against the law.  But how far do they appreciate the
nature of evil?  I can remember that when I was eight and we were
living in Ludlow I went with a school friend called Dora to spend a
holiday with her family at Stalybridge in Lancashire.  It was the first
time I had visited the north, and I was seeing it at a time of
depression.

I can remember looking down from their council house over the factory
chimneys, all without smoke.  While I was there we were taken for a
treat to a famous amusement park called, I think, Belle Vue, where
there was a firework display which was supposed to re-enact the
storming of the Bastille.  I knew little if anything about the French
Revolution, but I remember on my return telling my mother that, during
the display, real people's heads were thrown to the crowd.  I obviously
believed this at the time, yet surely, as an intelligent child (as I
think I was) of eight, I must have known that it is wrong to cut off
even dead people's heads and throw them to the crowd.  A young child's
conception of reality is very different from that of an adult.  Perhaps
that small boy I saw in the juvenile court so many years ago was right
after all when he said, "I knew it was against the law, but I didn't
know it was wrong."

But what those two boys did to James Bulger goes beyond any failure of
comprehension, any childish naughtiness, any lack of family care or
control.  We recoil from using the word evil about any child.  But the
unanswerable question remains unanswered.  Why?

TUESDAY, I4TH APRIL

I spent the long Easter weekend at Southwold with Alixe.  As I was
expecting Elizabeth Jane Howard, Selina Hastings and a small group of
friends from Beccles to arrive for lunch and tea on Easter Sunday, we
stocked up on cold meats and smoked salmon.

On Good Friday morning the weather could hardly have been worse.

We decided to join a walk of the combined churches from St.  Edmund's
Church to South Green for a service, but by the time we got to St.
Edmund's the rain had increased to a torrential downpour which became
sleet, and then hail.  It had been difficult enough to walk, and
certainly no one's voice could have been heard in this sheet of ice and
water.  The new vicar, a cheerful-looking woman, came in from the rain,
laughing and shaking her sodden cassock.  We waited for a few minutes,
but obviously nothing was going to happen, so we departed to seek
shelter in the bar of the Swan.  We were too early; it didn't open
until u, but we met Nettie de Montmorency at the door and she invited
us back to her house on the cliff.  We talked, gossiped, drank and
looked out over her lawn, which sparkled with hailstones.  By the time
we left, a fitful sun had come out and melted them, and by the late
afternoon it was too hot for us to sit comfortably in the
conservatory.

I had decided not to write much about politics in what is essentially a
record of my personal year, but it would be remiss not to mention the
Northern Ireland agreement.  I heard the news on the radio at 7 o'clock
with a mixture of relief, hope and scepticism.  It may not be the end
of senseless murder, but perhaps it is the beginning of the end.  But
the scepticism persists.  Sinn Fein/IRA would not have signed unless
they believed that this was a significant move towards a united
Ireland; the Unionists would not have agreed had they not been
convinced that the arrangements set out would strengthen the Union.
Both sides cannot be right.  The intervention of the Prime Minister at
the last minute seems to have been crucial.  If the agreement is
approved by the people of Ireland and does indeed result in a fair,
reasonable and accepted settlement he will deserve all the plaudits he
will undoubtedly receive.  But there is no great difficulty in
achieving at least a temporary peace if one is prepared to propitiate
the terrorists.  And there is something deeply re pug

April 1998 187

ri ant about the early release of murderers, some of whose crimes were
atrocious even by the standard of murder, and equally repugnant that
men of violence should be able to bomb themselves to a conference
table.  But this, after all, has been the history of the twentieth
century and we have long since ceased believing that the meek shall
inherit the earth.

SUNDAY, I9TH APRIL

I went very early by bus to Oxford to lunch with Jane and Peter, and to
walk with them in Woodstock Park.  The park was a delight.  We moved
slowly since almost every tree offered some particular interest in
shape or foliage.  The buds of the ash were breaking into their
peculiar deformed looking flowers, the horse-chestnut boughs were heavy
with budded clusters which will take another week of sunshine to break
into their white candles.  We paused at the bridge, its stones warm to
the hands, to watch a mother coot nesting in the middle of the lake and
feeding her chicks while her mate swam round with lazy insouciance.
Once on the pasture we crested a ridge and the palace came suddenly and
surprisingly into sight.  This is how one should always come across a
great house, even one which is familiar: stone, brick, parkland and sky
in perfect coherence, which every time strikes the eye afresh.

I felt very sorry for poor John Vanbrugh, bowling up in a coach with
his friends to show off his achievement and having admission barred by
an irate Duchess of Marlborough.  Apparently she never liked the house
and would have preferred something altogether more cosily domestic.  As
I have never yet seen inside Blenheim Palace, I don't know whether or
not to sympathize with the first Duchess.

Waiting for Peter to turn the car in the lane outside the park gates, I
stood for a moment in complete silence broken only by the note of a
single bird and the susurration of the breeze in the wayside grasses.
It was one of those moments of happiness and contentment which give
reality to death, since however long we have to live, there are never
enough springs.

TUESDAY, 21ST APRIL

Yesterday I went to the British Library for the opening by Chris Smith
of the galleries which will be open to the public today.  St.  John
Wilson's building was controversial from the first and no doubt will
remain so, but the final test will be the use made of it by those with
a reader's ticket and by the general public.  Certainly there is
immense enthusiasm for promoting the Library as a place where everyone
interested in books and our heritage can come, see the national
treasures, enjoy the facilities and the special exhibitions.  The
Pearson Gallery and the John Ritblat Gallery, showing some of the
greatest treasures of the Library, are examples of the successful use
of modern museum display techniques.  The material is beautifully
organized and displayed.  The John Ritblat Gallery is particularly
exciting.  There, on show, are such treasures as the Lindisfarne
Gospels and the Magna Carta.  The guest list for the opening was long,
but there was no crush in the galleries and I was able to move slowly
from case to case and in relative silence.  In the Pearson Gallery the
display on the development of writing was fascinating.  I hope a large
number of London schools will be able to visit it.  Except for St.
Pancras Station, this is a seedy and depressing part of London. Perhaps
the presence of the Library will do something to rehabilitate the
area.

An irritating beginning to today with too many telephone calls and too
much to be done before going to Southampton, where I was to conduct a
master class on "Writing a Novel" for Meridian Television.  The
programme went well.  We were actually filmed for an hour, which will
be cut down to half that time.  I was positioned at a desk with the
three participants ranged on chairs before me, but this seemed too
formal and I moved in front of the desk and perched on it for much of
the time.  None of the three was a complete amateur; the man was
already earning a living as a writer and the two girls had had some
success.  I had planned for the programme to be more like a discussion
between the four of us than a teaching session, and we managed to range
through what I described as the five main elements of a novel: the
plot, story or narrative; the characterization;

the setting; the writing style; and the structure.  The audience was
drawn from writing groups, who came forward at the end to talk to me
and to the other three participants.  This is the kind of arts
programme which is well

April iA 9 8 189

worth doing but which should be given more time.  Unfortunately ITV
scheduling seems now to be fixed rigidly by the full hour or half hour,
lacking that flexibility which can accommodate serious discussion.

I have taught creative writing at the University of California at
Irvine and at two of the three centres of the Arvon Foundation in the
UK, with which the Poet Laureate Ted Hughes has been closely involved
from its beginnings.  Obviously you can't make a writer of someone with
absolutely no talent, but it is possible to help with technique and, as
writing is a lonely business, most people enjoy getting together with
other aspirants to share experiences and to give each other
encouragement.

The Arvon courses, which I strongly support, are remarkably successful
in this respect and it always surprises me how a group of people,
chosen on a first-come basis, bond together so effectively.

Invariably, when I give a talk at a signing session, there is at least
one aspiring novelist in the audience who asks for advice.  In the
brief time available I can't say much, but there are four principles
which I see as important.

The first is to read widely, not in order to copy someone else's style,
but to learn to appreciate and recognize good writing and to see how
the best writers have achieved their result.  Poor writing is,
unfortunately, infectious and should be avoided.

Practise writing in whatever form; the craft is learned by practising
it, not by talking about it.  Some people find that writing courses or
local writers' circles are a help, but they are not for everyone.

Increase your vocabulary; the raw material of the writer is words and
the more we have available and can use effectively and with confidence
the better.

Welcome experience.  This means going through life with all senses
open: observing, feeling, relating to other people.  Nothing that
happens to a writer need ever be lost.

Of course what questioners really want is not this somewhat pietistic
encouragement, but advice on how to get published.  Amateur painters
can put their efforts on the wall; a writer never feels that he is a
writer until he sees his work in print.  Not infrequently I receive
letters which seem to suggest that there is some magic way to success
or that a publisher will accept a manuscript solely on my
recommendation.  I can only respond that publishers are business
people, not philanthropists, but that they need the seed corn of new
talent, and in my view an aspiring novelist who can tell a story, can
write well and can bring the reader into that happy collusion with the
writer which is at the heart of fiction, will eventually find a
publisher.

May

WEDNESDAY, 6TH MAY

The first two weeks of this month are going to be exceptionally busy,
leaving little time either for this diary or for the accumulating
general correspondence.

On Friday, 1st May, I spoke at the Global Spring Conference of the
International Women's Forum at the Park Lane Hotel, Piccadilly, having
been asked to do so by Katharine Whitehorn.  There were 300 senior
women present from this country, the United States, mainland Europe and
further afield, to discuss the role of the arts.  The session at which
I spoke was somewhat pretentiously entitled "Cultural Vibrancy and
Social Cohesion," but the speakers were all very well worth hearing,
not surprisingly since they included Janet Suzman, Genista McIntosh,
Prue Leith, Rabbi Julia Neuberger and Baroness Symons.

The next day I came to Dorset to attend the Dorset Arts Festival,
speaking in the Old Court House in Dorchester.  I have given talks at a
large variety of venues, but none more interesting.  I sat in the huge
judge's chair while the audience were disposed about the court in the
jury box, the dock and the spectators' galleries.  It was a peculiar
and sobering experience to be sitting in the very seat the magistrate
had occupied when he sentenced theTolpuddle Martyrs.  Before my session
began I went down into the cells below the court and then walked in the
footsteps of the former accused, negotiating the narrow stairs and
finding myself in the dock with the suddenness of a jack-in-the-box. It
must have been intimidating for those Tolpuddle men to come from that
claustrophobic darkness into the light of the crowded courtroom and to
gaze for the first time into the magistrate's eyes on the level of
their own.

No doubt it was intended to be intimidating.

I spent Saturday and Sunday with Rosemary in her cottage outside
Wareham, and then went to Winterborne Houghton to spend two days

May 1998 191

with Tom and Mary Norman.  I had told them that I longed to see
cowslips;

they were part of my childhood walks in the Shropshire countryside,
seen, too, when I cycled as a schoolgirl along die flat roads of the
fens, but I rarely come across them now.  Tom drove us into West
Dorset.  We walked along a stony ridge, across two fields and then
found ourselves in a sloping meadow leading down to a valley.  The
field was covered with cowslips, a shivering sea of bright yellow
blossom with hardly space to plant a foot between the clumps.  It was a
warm spring day with some breeze and it seemed that the whole air was
delicately and subtly sweet.  I had asked to see cowslips and was
seeing them in an almost unbelievable abundance.

This morning Tom and Mary drove me to Poole to speak at a luncheon in
aid of Dorset Victim Support, held in the old town.  This went well,
and I am now in the train travelling back to London.  I shall be only
briefly at home before it is time to go to Oxford on Friday to speak at
a conference on "The Novel and Society" at Rewley House.

TUESDAY, I2TH MAY

On Sunday afternoon I left Heathrow for Paris to promote the French
edition of A Certain Justice, It was a good day for a flight.  The
rural landscape passing beneath us looked, as always, like a needlework
collage;

the hemstitched fields, the silver satin of rivers, the clear linen
patches of green and yellow and the tightly knotted woods of dark green
wool appeared so cunningly contrived that I half expected the whole
design to be drawn up and hung against the blue back cloth of the
sky.

I was met at Roissy-Charles-de-Gaulle by Dominique Fusco, whom I have
known since my books were first accepted by Librairie Artheme Fayard.
As usual, I had been booked into a small and charming hotel, Le Due de
Saint Simon, where I was greeted by the same receptionist.

Fayard had filled the elegant sitting-room with magnificent flowers:

lilies, clusters of orchids and roses.

France was the last European country to take my books, but Fayard tell
me that I am now their highest-selling foreign author.

Fayard had hoped I could stay for longer than two days but it wasn't
possible, so I saw nothing of the city and the whole time was taken up
with the usual programme of newspaper and radio interviews, all of

which took place at the hotel.  But it was pleasant to be in Paris, as
it always is.

Yesterday a farewell dinner was given for me at her apartment by Mile.
Denise Meunier, the distinguished elderly and academic Frenchwoman who
has translated nearly all my novels.  The guests jabbered away in
French, changing to English when they saw I wasn't with them.

I just about held my own but wished, as I always do when in Paris, that
I was more fluent in the only foreign language which I have any hope of
understanding.  It seems ridiculous that I had a French lesson every
school day of my five years of secondary education but still can't
speak the language with any confidence.  Children today are more
effectively taught;

but then they have television, videos, foreign visits and exchanges and
language laboratories.  But acquiring foreign languages is a talent as
well as a skill.  I have met people on my travels who can learn and be
fluent in a new language in a matter of months.  My paternal
grandfather was such a one, but his talent has certainly not been
inherited.

FRIDAY, I5TH MAY

I have had three very happy days at Trinity College, Oxford, where on
Wednesday I gave the Richard Hillary Memorial Lecture.  Like most of my
generation, I have a lively memory of first reading his autobiography

The Last Enemy.  Hillary stands for a generation of young men from the
university Air Squadrons who fought in the skies over Britain.  He was
shot down, and on the first occasion was badly burned and disfigured,
but managed to persuade the RAF to let him fly again.  It was his last
flight.  An additional tragedy of his death was that he took a fellow
airman with him, and one who was married with small children.  I can
understand that Hillary needed to prove himself by flying again, but
the RAF should not have given way to his insistence.

Before the war Hillary was a typically privileged Oxford undergraduate,
too handsome for his own good, selfish, arrogant and hedonistic.  But
the war changed him, as it changed, for good or ill, everyone who took
part in it.  I am not sure I believe that the poignant final chapter in
his book is strictly accurate, but it does show that he had become a
writer.

One of the pleasures of Wednesday was meeting the heroine of that

May 1998 193

book, Denise, now Denise Patterson, a widow.  During the war she was
engaged to Peter Pease, a friend of Hillary's who was also killed, and
it was she who, steadfast in courage and courageous in grief, most
helped Hillary through the trauma of his burning.  In the book she is
described by him as beautiful; she remains beautiful today.

Yesterday and today I gave seminars to some of the English students and
post-graduate students.  The Master gave a dinner in the Lodge this
evening.  It was a wonderful night and we were able to stroll on the
lawn, glasses in hand.  I sat next to George Carman, QC--a guarantee of
fascinating conversation.  When I was researching A Certain Justice I
was advised to go to the Law Courts when he was appearing, to learn
what cross-examination could be.  I did so and he was indeed
formidable.

An additional pleasure of three memorable days has been meeting the
English tutor Dinah Birch and discussing with her the Victorian
novel.

I very much hope that we meet and talk again.

SATURDAY, l6TH MAY

I took Nina Bawden and her husband Austen Kark to dinner at the Halcyon
Hotel, a small return for the succession of wonderful meals I have
enjoyed at their house in Noel Road.  It was warm enough to sit
outside, which was initially pleasant, but a noisy quartet at an
adjoining table made conversation difficult and we asked to be moved
inside.  An excellent dinner and, as always, the ease and comfort of
dear friends.

It was on this day, eight years ago, that I stood with Ruth Rendell and
helped knock down a portion of the Berlin Wall.  The evidence is a
small piece of rubble with one smooth painted surface which rests on a
shelf in my bathroom and bears in ballpoint the date, 16/5/90.  The
colours were a garish purple and red when I hacked the piece away with
one of the chisels an enterprising German was hiring out to those who
wanted to make their small mark on history.  The colours have faded now
and the date would have been indecipherable had I not inked over the
figures a few months ago.  Both Ruth and I had been to Berlin on a
previous occasion to lecture for the British Council, and she and her
husband Don were anxious to see the Wall coming down.

I still remember clearly my earlier visit, from 1st to 8th December
in

1986.  Then I stood on one of the high platforms near the Reichstag.
The night was very clear and cold, the trees around totally bare.  I
gazed out over the Wall and the dead floodlit area beyond, imagining
the watching eyes and asking myself whether the Wall would come down in
my lifetime, or even in the lifetime of my grandchildren.  But the city
then was one of the most thrilling I have ever visited.  The air
crackled with a mixture of excitement and tension and no one seemed
ever to go to bed.  I remember one young West German writer saying that
he lived in the most terrifying city on earth and could never bear to
leave it.  I often remember cities by the quality and distinctiveness
of their street lighting:

Berlin seemed a city of harsh floodlights.  I stood at Checkpoint
Charlie, as brightly lit as a film set, and saw in imagination the
lonely hero of a.

Graham Greene or le Carre novel, walking with studied nonchalance along
the floodlit road towards the waiting motionless figures.

I can remember what people in Berlin told me, but not their names, nor
what they looked like.  One, a distinguished film director, told me
over dinner that his passion for cinema began as a young boy living in
the British occupied sector.  His mother had to work and left him with
a minder, and she would take him to the cinema as soon as it opened and
leave him there, with such food as she managed to provide, until late
at night when the last programme ended and he would be collected and
taken home.

Another memory is of leaving my hotel room one morning and seeing a
young woman dusting the wainscot in the corridor.  When I said "Good
morning," she answered with a Northern English accent.  I asked her
what had brought her to Berlin, and she said that was a long story, one
which she had obviously no intention of elaborating.  When I enquired
if she enjoyed working in the city, she said that she did and it was
much more exciting and better in every way than the last place in which
she had worked, which was terribly dull.  She added, "But you won't
have heard of it, it was called Berchtesgaden."  It was the first time
I realized that the location of Hitler's mountain eyrie meant nothing
to a whole new generation.

It gave me the same small shock as I experienced when I first went to
Japan to open an exhibition of crime writing in Tokyo.  I was told at
the hotel that a group of students would very much like to meet me.
About a dozen smilingly presented themselves with large gold-edged
cards on which they asked me to write a message and sign my name.  The
message they requested was "from P. D. James to my fan club at the
University of Hiroshima."

May 1998 195

In both 1986 and 1990 I went from the West into East Berlin.  On the
first occasion I had to submit to the long unsmiling scrutiny of the
frontier police.  On the second, Ruth, Don and I were greeted with
smiles and the hope that we would have a happy day.  Were they the same
guards?

SUNDAY, 31ST MAY

The Sunday Times Hay Festival was held from 22nd to 3151 May, and I was
sorry that I could only be there for the Friday and Saturday.  For
nondrivers Hay isn't the easiest town to get to, but I went by train to
Newport, a quick and easy journey, and was met by one of the official
cars for the beautiful winding drive to Hay.

I stayed, as I always do, with my long-standing friend Joyce Flack in
Honey Cottage, Bear Street.  I was sad to find her less than well.  I
had expected this, as I knew that she has a heart condition which may
require a pacemaker, and is blind in one eye.  This will be corrected
when the cataract is dealt with but the eye surgeon is waiting for a
decision on the pacemaker.  The border between Wales and England
actually runs through Hay, but Joyce is in Wales.  She says it's odd to
hear one surgeon saying, "We'll have to send you to England for that"
when being in England involves walking only a short distance down the
road.

I found Joyce as ebullient, determinedly cheerful and courageous as
always, but one of the sadnesses of old age is that one seldom hears
good news about the health of friends.  We talked from time to time
about death.  Joyce has absolutely no fear of it and is optimistic, if
not convinced, that there will be some kind of afterlife, which she
looks forward to as an interesting change from Hay-on-Wye.  Dear Peggy
Causton, with whom I played Scrabble twice a week until she died, also
had no fear of death.  She was totally without religious faith but said
that there was no point in being afraid of death since she wouldn't be
there when it happened.  None of us, of course, will be there when it
happens, but it's being there before it happens that is the worrying
part and whether we shall be there with mind intact or imprisoned in
some limbo of pain, degradation and dependence.

Hay is a popular festival with writers, as evinced by the glittering
variety of novelists, historians, poets and biographers who appeared
dur

ing the week.  I had first thought that Hay wasn't a particularly
propitious venue for a literary festival, apart from the difficulty of
getting there.  There is no large concert hall--indeed no large hall of
any kind-insufficient hotels to deal with a large influx of visitors,
and success is largely dependent on the weather since all the events
take place in tents.

But Hay has a distinctive atmosphere of enthusiasm, with warm receptive
audiences determined to enjoy everything on offer.  The enthusiasm
remained unabated some years ago when the rain beat down relentlessly
on taut canvas making some speakers almost inaudible, and audiences had
to wade gum-booted across sinking planks to get to their seats.  This
weekend the weather has been wonderful and the hills and woods at their
most verdant and shining.

I had two events, the first a discussion with Jill Paton Walsh about
her completion of the unfinished Dorothy L. Sayers manuscript, Thrones,
Dominations, and the second a talk about A Certain Justice, including a
brief reading.  After the first talk Jill and her publisher took me to
dinner at the largest hotel.  The conversation, concerned with ideas
rather than people, was marvelous, the food disappointing.

In the afternoon I went to hear Gitta Sereny talk to Anthony Clare
about her new book, Cries Unheard, which explores the life of the child
murderer Mary Bell.  She defended her decision to write the book,
rationally and with conviction, and showed herself willing to answer
criticism without undue defensiveness.  She was also less credulous
than I expected in trying to check the veracity of Mary Bell's account
of her childhood where this was possible.  But I still feel that the
book shouldn't have been published, mainly because of the effect of its
revelations on Mary Bell's daughter.  I also disagree with Gitta
Sereny's basic premise.  This is that children are born, if not
naturally good, at least naturally not disposed to viciousness, so that
if things do go badly wrong and a ten-year-old child wilfully kills two
small boys, then something must have happened in her life to turn her
from innocence into a killer.  It must be someone's fault, but not
hers.  This seems to me both simplistic and contrary to evidence.

It is repugnant to think in terms of children being born evil, but some
are born with a greater propensity to cruelty and unkindness than are
others.

Most of us know of children who seem born naturally good in that they
are loving, generous and happy; others from an early age seem to take
more pleasure from tormenting animals than is normal even with the most
destructive child.  I also deplore a book which lays the blame on the
child's mother when that mother, no longer alive, is unable to defend
her May if><?8 197

self.  If bad parenting can produce a monster, then the children of the
Wests can have little hope.  Such information as we have suggests that
they are coping with life.  I didn't raise this objection during
question time, and afterwards Anthony Clare asked me why not.  I said
that I felt that audiences had heard enough of my voice and I preferred
to listen rather than speak.  But I was a little surprised that no one
raised the point.

I can never be in Hay-on-Wye, even in summer, without remembering the
notorious case of Herbert Rowse Armstrong; but his was a winter crime.
Katharine Armstrong died on 22nd February 1921, and it was on 31st
December of the same year that her husband Major Armstrong was arrested
while in his office clearing up papers at the end of the year.

He was at first charged with the attempted murder of a rival solicitor
in Hay, Oswald Norman Martin.  It was while Armstrong was in custody
that his wife's body was exhumed and examined by the Home Office
pathologist, Bernard Spilsbury.  She had died of arsenical poisoning.

One memorable incident in a classic case was the attempted murder of
Martin.  Armstrong had invited him to tea and had handed him a scone
from the plate with the remark, "Excuse fingers."  This unorthodox
method of providing one's guest with sustenance must have increased
Martin's suspicions when, returning home, he was violently ill with
sickness and diarrhoea.

His doctor sent a sample of his urine to be analysed; it proved to
contain arsenic.  A very difficult summer then ensued for poor
Martin.

Police enquiries and the procedures for exhuming Mrs.  Armstrong's body
were slow and in the meantime Martin was ordered to behave naturally
with his rival and never under any circumstances to put Armstrong on
his guard.  This became increasingly difficult as Martin was bombarded
by Armstrong with invitations to tea in his office.  It must have been
a tremendous relief to the poor man when the arrest was finally made.

Another interesting incident took place at the committal proceedings,
where the magistrates, unused to committing a prisoner on a charge of
murder, had to look to the accused in the dock for advice on the
correct procedure.

Reading the account of the trial, it seems to me clear that Armstrong
was guilty, but there are still those in Hay, and in particular the
owner of Armstrong's house, who believe him innocent.  Most poisoners
murder, as it were, at a distance, sparing themselves the horror of
watching the victim die.  Armstrong was in the house while his wife
suffered the torments of arsenical poisoning.  Could a man be as
callously wicked as this and not display his nature in his everyday
dealings with other people?  Apparently

Armstrong never did.  He was meek, mild-mannered, a good father to his
three children who, in adult life, also believed him innocent.  The
case still intrigues, largely because the town, particularly in winter,
seems so unaltered.

The brass plate with Armstrong's name is still inside the solicitor's
office he occupied, Martin's office is still opposite, and Armstrong's
house still stands, as does the small gaol where he was incarcerated.

Some years ago a television company made a film of the murder and Joyce
saw the actor who played Armstrong, looking very like pictures of the
man, walking in his 19205 suit up Bear Street.  Joyce greeted him and
he swept off his hat in salute.  She said the moment was uncanny.  One
can imagine what this little town was like in the 19205:
claustrophobic, remote, everyone knowing the business of everyone else,
the same gossip, the same tea parties, the same tennis afternoons at
Armstrong's house, where his wife would imperiously call him in to
remind him that it was bath night.

There has been a proliferation of local art and literary festivals in
recent years and it sometimes seems that no small town is without
one.

Each has its individual atmosphere and, as a writer, one tends to
believe also its different audience, so that one speaks of "the
Cheltenham audience," "the Edinburgh audience,"

"the Hay audience."  Part of this may be imaginary.  I doubt whether
there is any essential difference.  But the audience at Hay-on-Wye does
seem particularly enthusiastic and committed, largely, I think, because
the festival is small and the tents close together so that there is a
sense of shared enjoyment.  This closeness can be disconcerting,
particularly when a writer is reading a poignant passage and is
interrupted by an outburst of enthusiastic clapping, or even by gales
of laughter, from an adjoining tent.  But this disadvantage is more
than outweighed by the convenience of having all the main events on the
same site.

I have been thinking about what makes a successful arts festival.

Firstly, the organizers should have the cooperation and, ideally, the
enthusiasm both of the local authority and of local people.  There is
never a welcoming atmosphere if residents feel that the festival is not
for them, and it is important to have events which they are likely to
support.  Then there is the question of access; Hay isn't easy to get
to, but cars meet the trains at Birmingham and Newport.  Organizers
should ensure that the writers can get to the festival and that, when
there, they are comfortably looked after.  Often arrangements are made
for them to stay with local people who act as hosts or hostesses.  For
the gregarious this may be pleasurable, but most writers dislike it.  A
reading is in effect a public per for

May 1998 199

mance, and afterwards most of us need to be quietly alone and not be
faced with a dinner party of guests who continue the questioning we
have already endured after our session.  It helps if the venue is
attractive or as beautiful as is Hay-on-Wye, and if there is a
reasonable number of good restaurants, but these are of far less
importance than the power to attract writers and artists whom people
want to hear and see, and the ability to promote that atmosphere of
enthusiasm, stimulation and shared enjoyment which marks all the best
art and literary festivals.

At nearly every festival I get asked about my novel The Children of
Men, either during question time or at the line-up for signing.  This
novel, which is totally different from all my other work, didn't begin
with a setting, but with a review I read in the Sunday Times.  The book
reviewed dealt with the dramatic and so far unexplained fall in the
fertility rate of Western man.  Apparently young men today are only
half as fertile as were their fathers.  The reviewer pointed out that,
of the millions of life forms which have inhabited our planet, nearly
all have in time died out or were destroyed, as were the dinosaurs.
Man's span on earth is as the blinking of an eye.

I began to imagine what the world would be like, and more specifically
what England would be like, a quarter of a century after a catastrophic
year in which the human race was struck by a universal infertility. For
twenty five years no one would have heard a baby cry or heard a child
laugh.  This idea for a dystopian novel was not in itself original; a
number of novels explore a world in which mankind knows itself to be
dying.  The Children of Men ends on a note of hope, but was traumatic
to write, and I was glad at the end to return to the less depressing
ambience of classical detective fiction.  The novel was not intended to
be a Christian fable but that, in fact, was what I wrote. It is also
different in technique since the whole story is seen through the eyes
of a single character and the structure is linear, the plot moving
strongly to its dramatic conclusion.

This is the only one of my novels which has not earned its advance, a
depressing and somewhat demeaning thought.  But it has produced more
correspondence and more controversy, particularly in theological
circles, than any other novel I have written.

June

THURSDAY, 4TH JUNE

I had a most helpful talk today with Michele Buck, Controller of Drama
at United Film and Television Productions, about an irritating
complication which has arisen in connection with the televising of a
third Cordelia Gray series by Ecosse Films.

For the first time I had decided, after consultations with Carol Heaton
and much thought, that Ecosse Films could have the rights to the
character so that they could continue to make Cordelia Gray television
series, writing original stories.  I would have some rights of
consultation, but essentially the same thing would happen with Cordelia
as happened with Colin Dexter's Morse.  I had confidence in this
decision after seeing their Mrs.  Brown, a film of quality and great
sensitivity.  I liked the people at Ecosse and felt that I could rely
on their integrity and good faith.  And the first Cordelia Gray series
confirmed my high opinion.  The screenplay was true to the book in fact
and spirit, was well acted and directed, and Helen Baxendale as
Cordelia fulfilled all our expectations.

I was less happy with the second series, the first real test for Ecosse
since this was not based on one of my books.  There was some good
acting but the pace seemed to me too slow with suspense built up which
came to nothing, while Cordelia had become ineffectual, dithering and
incompetent, willing apparently to see the case solved and the husband
of the victim identified as a murderer without a shred of convincing
evidence, forensic or otherwise.  The police work was incredible,
indeed at times risible.

When I was shown the outline to the proposed plot I stressed that in
any detective story the finding of the body is a crucial moment, both
visually and in terms of character and plot.  I suggested that it would
be most effective if the body were found by Cordelia.  This would have
been psychologically as well as visually effective, since she would
have had to

June 1998 201

face for the first time in the television series the reality of the job
she was doing.  Instead, when the series was shown, we saw neither the
body nor its discovery, and Cordelia, when interviewed by the police,
didn't even ask how the victim had died.  I myself still don't know how
she was killed.

And now a fresh complication.  I discovered it when sitting under the
dryer at my hairdresser's and looking through Hello!  At the back was
an article which stated that Helen Baxendale was pregnant but would
continue as Cordelia Gray and the plot "would accommodate the
pregnancy."

When I got home I rang Robert Bernstein, who said that Ecosse couldn't
wait to film until after the birth but that they had agreed on a plot
line.  Cordelia would have an affair with an old boyfriend who would
then disappear to the United States, leaving her, the brave little
woman, to cope alone.

In an attempt to salvage what I could, I wrote in April to Ecosse and
suggested that Cordelia could have gone on holiday to Italy, met an old
lover who was now dying of a brain tumour, and out of compassion and
the remembrance of the past, had had a brief affair.  Psychologically
Cordelia might have thought that her job as a detective was
paradoxically making her too remote from real life, too unwilling to
take risks, and that for once she was acting with reckless generosity.
I still very much disliked the idea of her becoming pregnant, but at
least this would make it more believable.  I pointed out that a modern,
intelligent, responsible young woman does not deprive her child of a
father unless that father is vicious or otherwise unsuitable, in which
case presumably Cordelia would not have loved him.  I even provided in
my note of th April a page of suggested dialogue.  It was a month
before a reply came, saying that they were adhering to the original
idea.

I then made it plain through my agent that I wished to dissociate
myself from the series and, in particular, to have the overall title,
An Unsuitable Job for a Woman, removed.  It was because of this that
Ecosse had to go to United Film and Television Productions, for whom
they were making the series, and the matter came for the first time to
Michele's attention.  She totally shares my concern and will do what
she can to put matters right, at least as far as the story line is
concerned.

Robert Bernstein has suggested that we have a meeting, but there is
really no point in that.  Ecosse have made it abundantly clear that
they neither value nor want any input from me and I think I must now
concentrate on distancing myself from the series.

Disappointment in the quality of the second series is less important

than the way in which Ecosse deliberately kept from me the news about
Helen's pregnancy.  I can perfectly understand her wish not to make the
news public until after the first twelve weeks, but Ecosse, while
agreeing to keep her secret, should have made it plain to her that they
had an obligation under the contract to tell me as the author, quite
apart from the courtesy due between people in a position of trust,

I feel more cheerful now that Michele has taken the matter in hand.

But whatever story line is adopted, the damage, as far as I am
concerned, can't be repaired, since Cordelia with an illegitimate child
is no longer my character.  During my January tour of the States I was
constantly urged by readers to write another Cordelia Gray story and,
before this happened, at least that was an option.  I am not at all
optimistic that we shall succeed in persuading Ecosse to drop the
overall title An Unsuitable Job for a Woman.  There is, after all, no
copyright in titles and I imagine that legally we can't stop them
continuing to use it.

The moral here is never let go of the rights to a character; but
effectively one always does that with television.  It is remarkable how
powerful the television companies are and how much control over their
work authors lose under the normal television contracts.  But most of
us are only too happy to have our books televised.  The medium is so
powerful that inevitably it brings readers in thousands, at least to
the paperback editions.  And on the whole I have been lucky, first with
Anglia Films and now with United Film and Television Productions.  When
the Anglia film of Death of an Expert Witness was made in 1983 it was,
as far as I remember, in seven hourly episodes.  Today we are lucky to
get three.

This is due more to financial restrictions than to new methods of
direction, although they do play a part.  The more leisurely
development of plot and character is seldom possible now.

Talking about television with my friends who have also had their works
adapted for the small screen, I find we agree on a number of dos and
don'ts which it would be useful, but alas impracticable, to include in
the contract.  Here, in the unlikely event that any television producer
or director is interested, are our main points:

i. Don't attempt to televise a novel unless you are really interested
in the work.  Too often it seems that you are interested only in
acquiring the title and the name of the author, and are then happy to
proceed with something which bears very little resemblance to the
original work.

June 1998 203

2. Novelists accept that television is a visual medium and that things
may have to be shown which are otherwise described.

But consider first whether the actors could actually communicate in
words rather than have everything shown in pictures.

3. Don't fundamentally alter the chief character.  With Dalgliesh,the
first director decided, as he told me, to bring him down market

I had, after all, decided to create a detective who was the son of a
Norfolk vicar.  That had been my choice and I don't see why television
should decide that this was altogether too middle-class for their
purposes.

4. Where there is original dialogue, why not use it as far as
possible?

I was very lucky with the Anglia treatment of A Taste for Death, one of
the best of the Dalgliesh series.  Dame Wendy Hiller took the novel on
the set and frequently remarked: "In the book I say this.  Why can't I
say it on screen?"  It is interesting that writers who are both good
and successful, like John Mortimer, seldom alter the original dialogue;
Brides head Revisited was almost entirely Waugh.  I suspect that
adaptors who are less successful can't resist the temptation to have
their own words on the screen.

5. As it may be necessary to cut out incidents and characters, what is
the point of adding additional ones?

6. Must we always have a car chase?  Men may like them although I can't
think why); most women find them boring in the extreme.  And if you
must have a car chase, must it go on for so long?  It need last only as
long as it takes us to go and make the tea.

MONDAY, 8TH JUNE

Planning to go to Southwold with Alixe for the weekend, I confidently
telephoned a friend, who comes in to feed Polly-Hodge when I am away
and who holds a key, but was disconcerted to hear that she was in
Gibraltar on holiday--so what to do about Polly-Hodge?  I decided to
risk taking her.  She made some protest when urged into the large
wicker basket but was at once silent when the car moved off.  We placed

ket on the back seat facing us so that she could both see and hear us.
She sat, paws folded inwards, eyes fixed ahead, resolutely resisting
the temptation to sleep in case the immense purring creature
accompanying us should get out of control.

There were no complaints on the journey until we stopped at a Little
Chef on the Ai2 and decided to have coffee.  As soon as we carried her
into the cafe the soft complaining mew began.  The waitress at the
Little Chef wasn't happy either and explained apologetically that no
animals were allowed.  We should, of course, have known this, so we
took two polystyrene mugs of coffee out to the car.  Alixe had decided
after our last foray through the East End that she would take the M4O
and then the Mi5--a longer but, we hoped, swifter route.  It worked
well both going and coming.  We reached Southwold in excellent time for
lunch.

There was a sea mist all day on Saturday, the air sweet, soft and warm
against the skin.  At Blythburgh, looking over the estuary, it was
impossible to see if the tide was in as water and sky were an
indistinguishable iridescent whiteness.  We drove to Snape along the
coast road between high banks splattered with red poppies, stopping at
Leiston to see the museum, which Alixe hadn't previously visited.  It
is well arranged, staffed by volunteers and has the charm and interest
of all well-kept local museums.  It shows the history of the firm of
Garrett's, who, at the height of their success, made steam engines and
agricultural machinery for home and export and employed as many as 700
local people.  I particularly liked the agricultural machinery and the
large wooden caravan in which the farm labourers ate and slept while at
work on the fields.  Alixe was moved most by one of the exhibits from
the last war: a tattered Union Jack which had lain on the altar of a
crude chapel in a Japanese prisoner-of-war camp, had been placed over
the coffins of the many dead, and was at last raised when the camp was
liberated.  There is always a slight melancholy about these small
museums; so many lives lived and lost, a way of life gone forever, each
grainy photograph a small memento mori.

After the museum we went to the Trading Post, where I bought a
Victorian jug and a large Victorian print in its original frame.  Some
of these prints, although overly sentimental, are beautifully drawn and
delicately coloured and seem to have a timeless charm.  We loaded it in
the back of the car then went on to Snape for lunch at the pub, the
Plough and Sail.

It was warm enough to eat outside in comfort and we enjoyed roast lamb,
perfectly cooked vegetables and sticky toffee pudding fresh from

June 1998 205

the oven, which was among the best I have ever tasted.  I had thought
that the sticky toffee pudding at the Ivy could not be bettered, but
this was its equal.  To eat a cold meal in the fresh air is always
agreeable, but to enjoy a well-cooked hot meal is a particular and
rarer delight.

After lunch we went to Aldeburgh, parked the car and walked along the
beach before returning to Southwold by the coast road.  Nettie de
Montmorency came at six o'clock to drink red wine and to keep us
abreast with local news.  We then spent a lazy evening watching a video
of A Room with a View.

On Sunday to Holy Communion in St.  Edmund s Parish Church at eight
o'clock.  I had expected the service to be held in the Lady Chapel with
the usual small group of worshippers.  Instead there was a substantial
congregation in the main body of the church.  Most of them, admittedly,
were old.  I suppose, like myself, they were people who prefer the 1662
liturgy, have an aversion to sermons and prefer to worship early in the
day.  What one misses, of course, is the music.  The rest of the day we
spent gardening to good effect, Alixe being particularly adroit at
tying up the tangled and top-heavy clematis and training the
honeysuckle under the kitchen windows while I more prosaically tackled
the weeds between the crevices of the York stone.  There was one bright
green weed which had encroached like a carpet over a large part of the
stones but, because of the recent rain, was quite easy to handle.  I
could insert a trowel under the edging and then roll it up like a rug,
a highly satisfactory procedure that was to show the carefully designed
pattern of the stones for the first time.

Later we walked along the promenade towards Walberswick, then back
along the beach under a sky rapidly changing from dark blue to black.
But the rain held off and, tired, we were able to lie on the pebbles.

They are surprisingly comfortable, providing one chooses the right spot
where the pebbles are small and can be used rather like a beanbag,
accommodating themselves to jutting bones and curves.  It was
wonderfully peaceful lying there, looking up at the moving clouds and
hearing always the fall and retreating hiss of the waves.  I wish I
could so order my life that this could happen more often.

Polly-Hodge adjusted remarkably well to the new house.  Clare had taken
her cat, Charlie, to Southwold and had left a litter tray with a packet
of litter in the under stairs cupboard.  I placed the tray for
PollyHodge in the conservatory, together with a saucer of water.  She
drank, and then immediately squatted on the tray, which seemed to me
remarkable

considering that I have had her for at least ten years and she has
never had to use a tray.  Then she explored every room in the house,
sniffing and obviously defining her territory.  Eventually she totally
disappeared.

We knew that she was upstairs but the most detailed search failed to
find her.  We even got to the expedient of foolishly opening cupboard
doors and drawers which had been shut and which she couldn't possibly
have got into.  Then Clare phoned and reminded me that Charlie had
behaved in just such a way.

"She's in the bathroom," she said.

"You'll probably find her behind the two wash-basins."  I protested
that there was no room behind the two wash-basins, but Clare pointed
out that if I lay down flat and looked into the knee-hole between the
basins then reached up with my hand, I would find a very narrow slit
between the back board and the wall.  That is where Charlie had been. I
swathed my arm in a towel and then gently inserted it, to be met at
once by a hiss and by the appearance of a white furry head.  So
Polly-Hodge's secret was discovered.

She had demonstrated such a degree of ingenuity, not to mention a
little malice, that she was thereafter confined to the sitting-room,
the kitchen and the conservatory.

Today, Monday, we had an early lunch and were on our way by half past
twelve.  The drive back took three hours, not unduly long.  Joyce was
here to welcome us.  Polly-Hodge went to the back bedroom at the top of
the house, which she rarely visits, and immediately fell asleep.

WEDNESDAY, 10TH JUNE

This evening Ruth Rendell and I held a conversation on "The Art of
Writing Crime Fiction" at the Royal Geographical Society in aid of the
Netting Hill Housing Trust Limegrove Appeal.  This was part of a series
of literary evenings to raise money for a new centre for West and
Central London's homeless people.  The Centre will contain forty single
bedrooms instead of the usual dormitory accommodation, a doctor's
surgery, a subsidized canteen, advice on finding a job and on
educational opportunities including computer training, a quiet room for
study, showers and a laundry--all the facilities, indeed, to enable
homeless young people to rebuild their lives.  The facilities will be
open during the day to London's rough sleepers, of which there are, I
understand, about

June 1998 207

2,000 each night.  Ruth is one of the Appeal Patrons and before we
began speaking gave a brief talk on what the Appeal hoped to achieve.

Ruth and I have taken part in a number of similar events, always for
charity.  Each event follows the same pattern; we have no chairman and
sit together on the platform to talk about our craft, taking it in
turns to initiate the conversation.  We usually cover the same
subjects--how we became writers, why we write crime novels, problems of
technique, our differences and similarities--but no conversation
follows precisely the same pattern and the level of success depends as
much on the response of the audience as it does on us.  Tonight was a
good evening with a chance to meet a number of friends at the reception
before we began.  We took questions after the talk and then signed
books.

Several people, presumably some of them dealers, came with early
editions to be signed.  It is dispiriting to see how many of these are
now hardly readable with the stuck bindings coming loose
and--worse--the paper browning.  We are perpetually being reminded of
the importance of reading and the written word, yet publishers
apparently have given up producing books which will last for more than
a few years.  I accept that much crime writing is ephemeral, but need
it be so ephemeral?  Before this appalling deterioration in standards,
readers could buy a hardback copy of a favourite author in the
knowledge that it would be a permanent acquisition for their personal
library, to be read and re-read, handled with pleasure and handed down
to the next generation.  Unless something is done to restore standards
we shall have no libraries in future, either national or personal.  The
reason for the present shoddy productions is, of course, money, but I
would have thought that it would pay publishers to bring out at least a
limited number of the most important twentieth-century writers in a
form which would endure.

I later learned that the evening raised 16,000, enough to build three
bedrooms: a remarkable result for a literary evening.

FRIDAY, I2TH JUNE

I am tired, having returned from participating in a session of Any
Questions at Devizes.  As I travelled by train from Paddington to
Chippenham where I was to be met, I wondered why I had agreed, for the
first time,

to take part.  I suppose it is an example of my often unwise and
sometimes disastrous disposition to say yes to something new which I am
far from certain I can carry off successfully.  The other guests--if
that is the correct word--were Paul Foot, David Puttnam and Bernard
Ingham, and we met first at a local hotel for a buffet supper and drink
before going on to the venue in the Corn Exchange.  Paul Foot and Sir
Bernard are old hands at the game; indeed Paul Foot has been taking
part, he said, for over thirty years.  Nevertheless there is always a
sense of slight apprehension before a public performance of any kind,
and we would have been happier with a meal after, rather than before,
the event.

Over supper Paul Foot and I discussed the Hanratty case and his book on
it, published some years ago, in which he seeks to convince the reader
that Hanratty was innocent.  I said that I had read it but still
believed that the verdict was right.  Paul said, in that case I
couldn't have read the book, but David Puttnam interposed to say that
if I said I had read it, then I had.

I remember that it was very cleverly argued and certainly raised
questions which still remain unanswered.  The case is often quoted as
demonstrating the differences and the respective merits and demerits of
our own accusatorial system of justice and the investigatory system of,
for example, France.  Under the latter the question would have been
addressed as to why a small-time London crook who had never been known
to handle guns would be in a field in Slough holding up the lovers
Michael Gregsten and Valerie Storie, and why he came to be so far from
his normal haunts.  The prosecution, naturally, did not address this
question and the defence did not do so since they were putting forward
the case that he was not there.

The explanation I heard later was that he had been hired to frighten
the two lovers, but that what had been meant merely as a warning had
gone dreadfully wrong and had ended with murder.  Then there is the
ambiguous part played by Peter Louis Alphon and the fact that the jury
were out for nine and a half hours before they returned a verdict of
guilty.  In some minds a discussion which needed nine and a half hours
surely proves that

James Hanratty, a small-time London crook, was executed on 4th April
1962 for the murder of Michael John Gregsten.  Gregsten and his lover,
Valerie Storie, had been sitting in their car at Deadman's Hill after
drinking at a public house in Taplow on the Thames, when a gunman took
them hostage and demanded that Gregsten drive towards London Airport.
In a lay-by on the A6 Road the gunman killed Gregsten, raped Storie,
and then shot her several times, leaving her for dead.  Hanratty was
convicted mainly on Stories identification evidence.  There are many
peculiarities about the case, usually referred to as the A6 Murder, and
the verdict remains controversial.

June 1998 209

there must have been reasonable doubt.  I can't help wondering whether,
if Hanratty had been brilliantly defended, a reasonable doubt might not
have been established.  But none of this affects my own view of his
guilt.  As the case continues to be controversial it would seem right
to exhume the body and establish the truth once and for all by DNA
evidence.  I find it strange that this hasn't been done.

There was the expected large audience, who were warmed up before we
filed on to the platform.  The questions were predictable: the recent
case of a prisoner released after twenty-three years for a murder which
he not only didn't commit, but which was now considered not even to
have been murder; how could one deal with the problem of the Balkans;

would we employ the Chancellor of the Exchequer to advise on our
private finances?  I didn't disgrace myself, but nor did I feel at the
end that I had said anything either original or useful.

I was driven home with Paul Foot.  In the programme he vigorously
promoted at length his own preoccupations and seemed rather like a
left-wing propagandist who had become permanently stuck in the 19605.

But I found, as so often happens, that I liked him more as I understood
him better, and we shared the drive to London, if not in agreement, at
least in amity.

SUNDAY, I4TH JUNE

I was lucky in the House of Lords draw for tickets to watch yesterday's
Trooping the Colour and was particularly pleased about this as I'd
hoped to invite Miss Lowe to see the parade with me.  The weather
forecast was depressing and rain was falling heavily as we joined a
queue to go through the security barrier before taking our seats.  We
were directed to the wrong stand and later had to move, but couldn't
have been better placed, in the front row of Stand Five.  I had warned
my guest to be warmly dressed and this proved very wise advice as,
although the rain cleared, it was an exceptionally cold day.  The
parade took place under grey and lowering skies but no rain fell.  The
guards marched on wearing short grey cloaks and there was a moment of
orchestrated drama when a command was barked out and simultaneously
they swept off their cloaks to reveal their scarlet uniforms.  The
precision of the marching never fails

to raise one's spirits and I suspect this must be so even with those
who have no sympathy with any military spectacle.  But somehow Trooping
the Colour lost part of its magic when the Queen substituted a carriage
for riding sidesaddle to review her guards.  The sight of that small
figure wearing a summer hat, being slowly paraded like a mascot along
the lines of the guards in what I think is a phaeton, looked
incongruous and even slightly ludicrous.

Afterwards we went to lunch in the restaurant of the Sainsbury Wing of
the National Gallery.  It seemed to me a good idea since it gave time
for the large crowd to disperse and we were then able to find a cab
without too much trouble.  I got home in good time to collect my
overnight bag and to take the Central Line to Liverpool Street, where I
caught the 5 p.m. train to Colchester.

Grey Gowrie had written a few months previously to ask if I would be
the speaker at a literary luncheon at the Clare Arts Festival.  After
ascertaining that he meant Clare, Suffolk, and not Clare in the
Republic of Ireland, I agreed--mainly, of course, because Grey had
asked.  But it proved a happy decision as I enjoyed myself greatly.  I
was a guest for the night of Countess Benckendorff and felt immediately
at home.  We had drinks at Cavendish House, were guests at a small
dinner party and went early to bed.  The weather still continued very
unsettled but I was glad to see Cavendish and Clare, the former a
particularly lovely village.

Before the luncheon I visited Clare church.  It is typical of the best
of East Anglian churches, beautifully proportioned, light and airy with
the windows and columns closely set and an interesting
sixteenth-century lectern.  We went up into a galleried pew which I
thought at first must have been a Victorian innovation to provide
comfort and privacy for the local squire, but is, in fact, much
earlier.  The parish priest said that the church was considering how
best this gallery and the space underneath could be used, perhaps to
provide an area for private prayer where people could sit in quiet and
be unobserved.

The luncheon was in the old schoolroom.  We ate salmon in a very good
sauce followed by strawberries and cream and a lemon tart.  The service
by volunteers, mostly young, was very slow and I found I had
transported into Suffolk my London preoccupation with time.  When
coffee still hadn't appeared at a quarter to three I murmured that
guests would find their afternoon gone by the time I had finished
speaking; I was assured that they expected their afternoon to be gone
and the only worry was whether I would be too late back in London.  It
was certainly

June 1998 211

half-past four before the questions were finished and they could have
gone on for much longer.  One of the visitors was driving back to
London and offered me a lift.  I was particularly grateful as I had
forgotten that the Tube strike had started and I could have been
stranded at Liverpool Street.

I had been worried about leaving Polly-Hodge and expected to find her
hungry and aggrieved.  Happily, although glad to be fed, she seemed
reasonably content.  I had left her enough to see her through until
this afternoon but was later back than I had planned.  I expect that,
like most of her devious kind, she has a second and secret source of
supply for such an emergency.

TUESDAY, l6TH JUNE

This evening I went to the reception and prize-giving of the Society of
Authors, which this year was held at the Roof Gardens, Kensington High
Street, which I hadn't previously seen.  The choice of venue was a
happy one as the rain had momentarily ceased and we were able to stroll
outside, thus avoiding the congestion and high level of noise which one
usually gets at these events.  I was surprised at the gardens.  There
weren't many flowers but a great deal of green, and it seemed amazing
that the building could support such a weight of trees, earth and
water.  The two flamingoes looked rather depressed, as if aware that
they were in the wrong place.  Michael Palin presented the prizes and
made a short, eminently appropriate and very funny speech.  Afterwards
I was invited by Mark Le Fanu to a small dinner party with Maggie
Drabble, Michael Holroyd, Diana Shine, who is shortly, alas, to retire
from the Society, and Michael Palin and his wife.

The Society of Authors awards ceremony is a cheerful event, largely
because it provides an opportunity for writers to get together.  The
prizes, except for the Betty Trask Award, are not large and there is no
shortlist and no formal dinner where prospective winners have to endure
the probing eye of cameras.  The Betty Trask Award has, however, always
been controversial.  It is awarded for a novel of a romantic or
traditional nature by a writer under the age of thirty, and one knows
perfectly well what Betty Trask, herself a romantic novelist, hoped to
achieve.  But

judges through the years have tended to concentrate on traditional
rather than romantic novels and sometimes, I suspect, Betty Trask would
be surprised if not a little aggrieved by the choice of book.

WEDNESDAY, I/TH JUNE

Macmillan are planning to reissue two novels by Nicholas Blake, The
Beast Must Die and A Tangled Web, and have asked me to write an
introduction suitable for both books.  The reissues will be part of a
Classic Crime series aimed at bringing back those old favourites which
have been allowed to go out of print.  I sent off my introduction this
afternoon.

Nicholas Blake (pseudonym of the poet Cecil Day-Lewis) was one of the
writers I most enjoyed during my adolescence but, like Dorothy L.
Sayers, he was an innovator of style rather than form.  Most or the
novels are written within the accepted contemporary conventions of an
exciting narrative, a credible and tantalizing mystery and an amateur
detective who combines creativity with ratiocination.  He based his
sleuth, Nigel Strangeways, on his friend the poet W. H. Auden, who was
himself a lover of detective fiction and who wrote one of the defining
essays on the genre, "The Guilty Vicarage," published in 1948.  In this
Auden examines the obstinate appeal of the classical detective story in
the light of Christian theology.

In The Beast Must Die Nigel Strangeways is married to his second wife,
Georgia, a world-famous explorer who contributes her own insights and
theories to his cases.  It is interesting how many of the 19305 writers
who created highly individual detectives married them to successful
professional women.  Lord Peter Wimsey finally wins popular detective
novelist Harriet Vane, although there are differing opinions about
whether this wish-fulfilment fantasy on the part of the author was
entirely wise.  Some readers find Harriet an irritating woman, although
she does become more human after marriage.  Albert Campion marries Lady
Amanda Fitton, whom we are supposed to believe is an aeronautical
engineer although we never hear of her with even a spanner, while Ngaio
Marsh's Roderick Alleyn is the husband of a famous painter, Troy.

At least two of the writers, Dorothy L. Sayers and Ngaio Marsh, were
able to make use of their own professional expertise.  We can believe
that

June 1998 213

Harriet is a detective novelist and Troy a painter.  I think this
tendency on the part of women writers to equip their detectives with a
successful and distinguished wife is particularly English.  Georges
Simenon is content to have Mme Maigret happily busy in the kitchen.  It
is a difficulty I have avoided by keeping Adam Dalgliesh a widower.

SATURDAY, 2OTH JUNE

Yesterday to Chatsworth to present the Heywood Hill Literary Prize.  It
was a perfect day, to the satisfaction of organizers and guests alike
as the event is held in the garden.  I had Andy collect me at half-past
nine to drive me to Derbyshire as I was worried that the one-day strike
of maintenance men on the railways might mean a delay on the train.  In
fact it did, as the train and coach party were late in arriving, but
not so late as to put the event seriously out of timing.  I hadn't seen
Chatsworth before, largely, I suppose, because I don't drive and many
of the great houses aren't easily accessible except by car.
Superlatives become platitudes in the face of such beauty, such riches
of art and architecture and such ordered perfection of nature.

The prize-giving itself was fun.  There was a marquee and tables set
both inside and on the lawn, and a red-jacketed band played the kind of
jolly music one used to hear as a child at the end of piers, adding
greatly to the air of slight frivolity.  This was not a string quartet
affair.  It was planned to coincide with the annual party for mayors,
so that my first impression was that the local authorities were
astonishingly fond of literature.

Then there were the literati from London, customers of Heywood Hill,
and others who were there presumably because of friendship with the
Duke and Duchess or with John Saumarez Smith, who manages the bookshop.
So it was a strangely assorted party, but one which went remarkably
well, although the mayoral chains sat gently clanking together and
there wasn't a great deal of mingling.  I envied the confidence which
could mix two such discordant groups in the happy assurance that a good
time would be had by all, as, indeed, it was.

No one, including me, spoke for too long, which is always an
advantage.

The two prize-winners were Richard Ollard, whose biography of Pepys I
had re-read before travelling, and a writer new to me, Norman

Lewis, travel writer, diarist and novelist.  He is nearly ninety, and
in his speech after the presentation described how, as a boy, he had
become enchanted with the written word.  He was sent to spend long
holidays with three maiden aunts, one an epileptic and subject to
constant fits, another who spent the day weeping and a third who was
manic.  They wouldn't let him out of the house so he watched other
children at play from the windows.  However, they had a library and he
was able to relieve the lonely hours of his imprisonment with reading.
From this grew a lasting love of books and his own career as a writer.
Of all the reasons given by writers for that first spur to creativity,
being imprisoned by mad aunts is the most intriguing.

After lunch guests were able to see the house--particularly the
library, where special books had been laid out--or to walk in the
park.

Then, when the coach had left for the station, I relaxed in the drawing
room until tea was served.  I had been invited to stay the night and
the room into which I was shown was called "The View."  It was
appropriately named; the view was magnificent.  I gazed out of the
immense window with its twenty-four panes at the garden and, to the
horizon, grasslands, hills, woods, and the summer sky.  There were
enough books in the room--carefully chosen to suit all possible
tastes--to keep one happily reading for a month.

I went to rest before dressing for dinner and picked up Enid Bag nold's
autobiography.  What a complicated, not entirely likeable, woman she
must have been.  One passage: "Who wants to become a writer, and why?
Because it is the answer to everything, to why I am here, to
uselessness.

It's the streaming reason for living; to note, to pin down, to build
up, to create, to be astonished at nothing, to cherish the oddities, to
let nothing go down the drain, to make something, to make a great
flower out of life even if it's a cactus."

Who wants to become a detective novelist and why?  To impose order on
terrifying chaos?  To bring justice out of injustice?  To give the
illusion that we live in a moral and comprehensible universe?  To make
money?

To provide a structure within which writer and reader can safely
confront terror, violence, death?  To show that to some things at least
there is an answer?  To distance the atavistic fear of cruelty and
death?  To make a pattern?  To explore men and women under the trauma
of a police investigation for the ultimate crime?  To create a modern
morality play in which truth is at least established even if it doesn't
prevail?  To celebrate justice?  To get the better of one's enemies? To
gain the illusion of power?

June 1998 215

To advise and entertain, solace and delight?  Because it's the thing
one does best?

Bagnold quotes a phrase from Gibbon which caught my eye: "In that
silent vacancy that precedes our birth."  Is our love for the
architecture, art and beauty, which links us to the past, part of our
need to know where we come from and, by touching, seeing, loving
inanimate objects, to give the illusion that we have been here longer
than our brief span?  It can only work one way, and perhaps that is
part of the terror of death.

When that final lid is screwed down on us there will be no more
vicarious living.  But now we stretch out minds, even hands, into the
past and gain a spurious immortality.  The silent vacancy comes
alive.

Tom Stoppard was among the guests and I found in my room the Faber
paperback edition of his broadcast plays.  They were first broadcast as
long ago as 1966 and I can't think why the BBC doesn't let us hear them
again.  The Corporation must have a wealth of archive.  Why is it so
neglected?  Why do we no longer see on our screens the single play by a
distinguished playwright?

Before I began dressing for dinner the telephone rang and the butler
said that the Duke wondered whether I would like a glass of
champagne.

Indeed I would, and he brought it up personally to all his guests.  I
was thinking how much at home one feels in the private apartments.  But
how strange to live in a house where every yard walked reveals
something fresh of beauty, interest or history, where one glances up to
see a Velazquez, a Rubens, a Lawrence, a Frans Hals, a Van Dyck.  Some
of the Duke's purchases of modern art were resting against the wall,
obviously awaiting their right place.  It was interesting to see that
even the owners of great houses face the problems of we humbler
mortals, not knowing what to do with recent acquisitions.  I could
never get used to living in a house with 175 rooms, 359 doors, nearly
8,000 panes of glass to be cleaned, 56 lavatories and 3,426 feet of
passages.  It must sometimes seem far more of a responsibility than a
pleasure.

After dinner, sitting on the terrace with the other house guests as
darkness fell, with the house floodlit and golden behind us, I wished I
was standing on a distant hill looking down at it.

This morning, from my bedroom window, looking out over the formal
gardens to the river, I could see coloured tents and a large marquee
erected for what was apparently to be some kind of flower show, and in
the next field a fun-fair with a children's carousel.  Small figures
moved about with that air of un flurried busyness which is always
agreeable to watch.  I could have been Glencora, Duchess of Omnium,
surveying the preparations for her great summer fete.  I almost
expected to see the archery targets being set up for the beribboned and
crinolined ladies to demonstrate their skills while allowing the
gentlemen discreetly to help them pull the bow.  But instead the fete
burst into bloom with the morning and I watched while, like an
accelerated film, shrubs and small trees appeared as if by magic.  It
was one of those moments when a vivid scene from fiction becomes
reality.

After breakfast I went to the shop, which is in the Orangery and,
unlike some shops of its kind, actually sells things that one is happy
to buy.  Andy reappeared with the car at half-past nine, but it was
nearly an hour later before we left.  We called in at the farm shop and
then had a comfortable ride home.

I went down to John Lewis with some Baxter prints that wanted reframing
and to look out samples of wallpaper in the hope that work will
actually begin on repairing the house sometime in the next month or
so.

Then home, a quiet evening writing up the scribbled note for this diary
and early to bed.

TUESDAY, 3OTH JUNE

I arrived home this evening from a visit to Stockton, where today I
received the honorary degree of Doctor of Letters of the University of
Durham; this is my sixth honorary degree.

I left London for Darlington yesterday afternoon, was met at the
station and driven to my hotel in Stockton in time to change for dinner
in the Board Room with the Chancellor, Sir Peter Ustinov, and senior
officers of the University.  My fellow honorary graduands were the
novelist Pat Barker and the actor Richard Griffiths.  I hadn't met
either of them before, but I admire their work and I greatly enjoyed
their company.

There was much laughter at the dinner, as one might expect with both
Peter Ustinov and Richard Griffiths present, and I thought I detected
some competition in wit and a slight professional glint in the eye as
they viewed each other across the table.

This morning we got together at the Town Hall to form a procession to
the parish church, where the degree ceremony was to take place.  It
was

June 1998 217

a long and colourful procession.  The English are not given to marching
except when in the Forces, and even a formal procession has the air of
a leisurely and companionable stroll by people at ease in each other's
company and, however bizarrely costumed, not much interested in the
reaction of spectators.  Apparently last year one of the local
onlookers turned to her companion and asked, "What's all this about,
then?," to receive the reply, "I think it's a Gypsy wedding."

This was my first visit to Stockton (although not to the North East)
and I was impressed by how much is being achieved in one of the UK's
poorest regions in terms of deprivation, poverty and unemployment.

The Stockton campus, which is an integral part of Durham University,
was created in 1992 in purpose-built accommodation on the banks of the
River Tees.  From the beginning it sought to attract local students,
particularly adults and those with no family tradition of higher
education.

This it is doing with remarkable success: over sixty per cent of
entrants to the Stockton campus come from the region, over fifty per
cent are mature students coming other than through the traditional
A-level route, and the degree results achieved are identical with those
of Durham.  Even on my brief two-day visit I felt I was being welcomed
into a lively community of dedicated and enthusiastic people committed
to their vision of what the North East deserves and what it can
achieve.  For me this has been an educative as well as an enjoyable two
days.

July

SUNDAY, I2TH JULY

To granddaughter Eleanor and partner Scott for tea and to see their
West Hampstead flat.  It is small but delightful with light pouring in
from large windows and a skylight, and a balcony which now has been
made into a small garden.  It overlooks the railway, but I never mind
the sound of passing trains.  When as a child I lived at The Woodlands
outside Ludlow, I could hear the trains across the fields when I was in
bed, a sound at once comforting, exciting and holding the promise of
imagined journeys.

On our childhood Sunday walks we would race across the fields at the
first intimation of an approaching train, clamber on to a stile and
wave at the driver and fireman.  Invariably they would wave back.  If
we were lucky, the fireman might be feeding the furnace and we would
glimpse the flaming heart of the monster.

It was on this day, izth July, in 1988 that Douglas Hurd sent me the
letter from the Home Office to ask whether I would be willing for my
name to go forward for appointment as a Governor of the BBC.  This
wasn't altogether unexpected as Duke Hussey, Chairman of the Governors,
had telephoned me a few days earlier to get my reaction.  His call was
totally unexpected but welcome.

My term of five years as Governor, despite the occasional trauma and
the persistent realization that I was both less useful and less
effective than I had hoped, was one of my most enjoyable periods of
public service.

The BBC has had a board of twelve Governors since its inception and the
system has on the whole worked well.  Governors are appointed by the
Queen on the recommendation of the Prime Minister and, as with so much
in British public life, the process by which the selection is made
remains mysterious.  In recent years there has been a pattern.  One
Governor represents Scotland, one Wales and one Northern Ireland.  In
addition, there is usually a Governor experienced in finance, one who
is a trade unionist, one

July 1998 219

representing the arts, and an ex-ambassador, who is presumably included
to have special regard to the interests of the World Service.  The
others are usually eminent in their fields.  It has always been
regarded as an honour to serve as a Governor of the BBC and I certainly
so regarded it.

During the five years in which I served, the BBC was chiefly concerned
with ensuring the renewal of the Charter.  This was a corporate effort
involving the enthusiasm and commitment of the Governors, the Director
General, Michael Checkland and his successor John Birt, the Board of
Management and the staff.  Success could certainly not be taken for
granted.  The BBC had powerful friends and public support but it also
had powerful and well-informed enemies who accused the Corporation of
extravagance, mismanagement and political bias.  It was accepted that
there had to be changes, some of which would be painful.

The most traumatic, probably the most controversial, meeting of the
Governors was one at a private dinner when it was decided, not at first
unanimously, to appoint John Birt to succeed Michael Checkland as
Director General.  Both the Chairman and Vice-Chairman felt strongly
that it was right to make that decision, and at that time.  John Birt
had served as deputy for five years.  He was the obvious candidate; he
had both the dedication and the strength required to assist the
Governors in making the necessary reforms if the Charter were to be
renewed, and to announce the successor to Michael Checkland well in
advance of his retirement would avoid months of maneuvering and
speculation which could only be damaging to the BBC.  It also seemed
pointless to go through the procedure of advertising the post if this
were merely a charade to give the impression of transparency.

The appointment of the next Director General will, no doubt, be made in
a less controversial manner, which is not to say the choice will be
without controversy.  But he or she will still be the candidate
acceptable to the Chairman.  This is inevitable.  The relationship
between the Chairman and the Director General is vitally important to
the BBC.

They need to be aware of their special and different responsibilities
and the defining limits of those responsibilities.  There should be
mutual sympathy and respect between them and a clear recognition by
both of what is meant by public service broadcasting, a recognition
also that their roles are complementary, not collusive.

A question, although it was never raised vociferously during my time as
a Governor, is whether the Governors should be chosen in a more open
and accountable way, perhaps even elected.  I can't see how election
could work satisfactorily but it shouldn't be difficult to make the
selection process more transparent than it is at present.

There is a dilemma at the heart of the BBC and one which I don't think
has been resolved.  The Corporation should represent excellence in
broadcasting, the standard by which all other broadcasters are happy to
be measured.  This excellence is sometimes difficult to reconcile with
high viewing figures, and the BBC has always been almost morbidly
conscious of its share of the market.  The fear, largely unspoken, has
always been that if the listening and viewing share falls below a
critical figure (thirty per cent is often quoted), the licence fee will
be in jeopardy since viewers and listeners will argue that it is unfair
that they should be compulsorily charged for a service which they
rarely use.  This leads to a concentration on viewing and listening
figures and an insidious temptation to go down market which could be
fatal to the future of the BBC.  If the BBC does not provide something
different from, and consistently better than, other broadcasters, it
may as well be out in the market place fighting for its audience share
like everyone else, and paid for by those who want it.

It seems to me that in the last two years the BBC has concentrated more
on market share than on quality.  In particular, the reiteration that
channels must appeal to the young is a euphemism for going down-market,
hardly a compliment to the young.  I sometimes feel that, if I covered
up the name of the channel in the newspaper listings, it would be
difficult to see which programmes have been put out by the BBC. Already
it is in danger of becoming just one more broadcaster.  We may indeed
reach the curious situation where a new broadcaster will come on the
scene dedicated to excellence and usurp the high ground once occupied
by the BBC.

Whether it is paid for by licence fee or by general taxation, the BBC
needs this assured income if it is to continue.  My own view is that
people will pay for it if it provides quality, even if they watch or
listen comparatively rarely.  I do not share my elder daughter's
enthusiasm for opera, but am happy that I should contribute through
taxation to the provision of a major opera house; the fact that I no
longer have children or grandchildren |

at school does not mean that I resent helping to pay for national
education.

I came to the BBC as a keen listener and viewer, but as one who was
always wary about the subtle dishonesty of much television.  It seems
to me important always to recognize that every image shown is one which
the cameraman has chosen to film and the director, editor or producer
has chosen to show.  I learned a salutary lesson when I was in the
Health Service.  There was a shortage in the region of beds for the
young chronic

July 1998 221

sick, who sometimes had to be inappropriately nursed in long-stay
geriatric wards.  The BBC set out to make a programme about this
problem.

It showed a very young and pretty patient suffering from MS and, in
filming the ward in which she was nursed, concentrated on the most
senile, depressing and unattractive of the old people.  No mention was
made of the fact that the young patient had been offered a place in a
young chronic sick centre more than once but preferred to stay where
she was because she liked being pampered by some of the elderly
patients, enjoyed the excellent facilities of the physiotherapy and
occupational therapy departments, and was taken home most weekends by
one of the nurses to give her a change of scene.  It did not need this
programme to reinforce what I suspected; documentary producers all too
often decide what point they want to make and then look for the
evidence.

I also dislike television programmes which muddle fact and fiction, but
usually with the intention of leaving the viewer believing he has seen
the truth.  The Monocled Mutineer and Tumbledown, both excellently
directed and acted, were examples of this less than honest filming.
Only too often protests are met with the excuse, "But it made good
television."  We should ask more often, Was it fair?  Was it balanced?
Was it true?  But it seems to me that the biggest problem for the
Governors is that they have least power in the one area which matters
most: the making of programmes.

The BBC exists for no other purpose than to put out programmes of the
highest quality, both on television and on radio.  Everything it does
should be subordinate to its purpose of excellence in programme-making.
Here the Governors have some influence but no real power.  By tradition
Governors do not preview programmes; the occasion on which this was
done with Real Lives when Stuart Young was chairman, provoked immense
resentment and controversy.  Any previewing, and therefore prejudging,
of programmes is regarded as impugning the artistic freedom of
producers and directors--a suggestion which has always been anathema to
the BBC.

Programme-making must be left to the experts and they must have the
right to fail as well as the satisfaction of succeeding.  But all this
does mean that Governors are virtually powerless actively to influence
artistic excellence, the very task which it is their responsibility to
uphold.

The BBC today is not a happy organization.  Efficient managerial
systems, providing they do not substitute one onerous bureaucracy for
another, are important, but less important than the clear acceptance of
the ethos and responsibility of public service broadcasting and a
climate in which creativity and artistic excellence can flourish.

For a publicly funded organization and one which frequently proclaims
its openness, the BBC is extraordinarily secretive.  The costs of the
central administration are high in relation to those devoted to
programme-making and it is difficult to justify the millions spent on
outside managerial advice, particularly in the light of the surely
adequate salaries now paid to members of the Board of Management. Radio
continues to take second place to television and there sometimes seems
with radio a somewhat desperate desire for change, as if change in
itself were synonymous with progress and improvement.  The high cost of
equipping the BBC to compete in the international market of digital
broadcasting has drained resources from programme-making.  The BBC
still produces superb programmes but too often they are peaks of
excellence in a. depressing plateau of trivia.

Much will depend on the talents, energy and vision of the new Director
General.  Ours is an age obsessed with systems and managerial
techniques.

What the BBC needs now is someone who can inspire and enthuse human
beings, particularly the creative men and women on whom the future
depends.  Since it seems unlikely that the public will now be prepared
to pay a higher licence fee, perhaps the BBC should concentrate on
doing less and doing it better.

Before I finished my five-year stint as a Governor I was asked to
address my fellow Governors and the Board of Management after dinner at
one of our annual residential conferences.  Re-reading what I said
then, the talk seems moralistic and even naive.  But what strikes me
most forcefully is how old-fashioned it is.  I could be speaking of a
different age, a different BBC.  I find this thought depressing.  But
the talk still represents what I feel about the purpose and ethics of
public service broadcasting and, particularly, about a service which
describes itself as the British Broadcasting Corporation.

MONDAY, I3TH JULY

I have just finished reading The Trial by Charlotte M. Yonge, which was
kindly sent to me by Dinah Birch of Trinity College, Oxford, following
our discussion on the Victorian novel.  The main interest for me in
this somewhat turgid novel is the insight it gives into the domestic
and professional lives of middle-class Victorians, and particularly the
subservient

July ipp8 223

and restricted role of the women.  If the author was intending, at
least partially, to write what Trollope in his autobiography described
as the novel of sensation, as opposed to the novel of realism, she
hasn't succeeded.

The murder comes too late, and the story has too little narrative
energy to generate either tension or excitement.

With it I have been re-reading The Duke's Children, prompted by Dinahs
excellent preface to the Penguin edition.  I agree with her assessment
of Frank Tregear, an admirable young man, no doubt, but one definitely
on the make, whose head always rules his heart.  We feel none of the
sympathy for him that we do for poor Burgo Fitzgerald.  I love the Bar
chester saga and these are books I invariably take with me on long
journeys but, for me, The Duke's Children is the least successful.  Of
the young people only Lady Mabel Grex engages my sympathy.  Lady Mary
Palliser is obstinate and charm less Lord Silverbridge and his brother
no more than amiable nonentities.  I found the pert prettiness of the
egregiously popular and beautiful American heiress Isabel Boncassen
more irritating than appealing.  It is obvious that the author was in
love with his creation.  If Lord Silverbridge had had any sense he
would have married Mabel Grex, but the young men in Trollope, seldom
worthy of the women who love them, can only be happy with wives who are
content to treat them as lords and masters and regard them as young
gods.  Even the Duke, one of Trollope s most successful and remarkable
characters, loses my sympathy when he treats Mrs.  Finn with
ungentlemanly callousness and injustice.

I had planned today to go to Hatfield to have lunch with Clare and
visit Lady Salisbury's garden, which is only open on Mondays.  However,
I had a telephone call from Kay Harper at Swavesey to say that Doris
was dying and would like to see me.  I caught the 10:15 train from
King's Cross, which should have taken just over fifty minutes, but was
delayed and diverted because of a defective rail.  Doris was
semi-conscious but was able to recognize me and when I bent over to
kiss her and say "God bless you," she was able to whisper "And you
too."  She was on one of those merciful continual morphine lines into a
vein and was in no pain, although the constant hoarse gurgling in her
throat was distressing to hear.  But she is fortunate in being nursed
to the end at home with Kay's loving care and with nurses and other
helpers whom she knows coming in regularly instead of a continual
change of agency staff which so many hospital patients have to face.
Despite the growth of the hospice movement, which has led the way in
the care of the dying, there are still far too many patients who endure
unnecessary suffering at the end, or who

die among strangers.  Doris is dying among those who love her, without
pain and, I think, without fear.  This is the most any of us can hope
for.

TUESDAY, I4TH JULY

I went to the Royal Garden Party, arriving at the Hyde Park Corner
gate.

This meant I avoided the queues and had a quiet, enjoyable walk through
the gardens.  The lawn seemed more crowded this year than ever and,
being reluctant to join the sc rum I didn't set eyes on any Royal from
beginning to end.  The Garden Party is wonderful for people watching
which is its main attraction.  I did manage to procure some iced coffee
and sandwiches before leaving early.  I know that protocol decrees that
no one leaves before royalty on occasions when they are present, but I
think this can hardly apply to the annual Garden Parties.

Then to the Conservative ward party, held in the Cardinal Vaughan
School because of the uncertain weather, where I discovered that I was
billed as guest of honour and was expected to make a short speech. This
I did and returned home in time to see the first instalment of ITV's A
Certain Justice.  The adaptation is skilful and most of the acting
admirable, particularly Penny Downie, who plays Venetia Aldridge.  It
was possible not only to hear what the actors were saying, but to know
who the characters were.  Admittedly, as author of the book, I had a
head start in this, but I get increasingly tired of TV series when one
has to wait twenty minutes to sort out the characters and their
relationships to each other.  If tonight's standard is maintained, this
should be a successful adaptation.

Today is Jane's birthday.  We don't celebrate birthdays with much
enthusiasm in the family except those which mark rites of passage, but
I expect she will have the usual quiet and enjoyable dinner with her
family.

I shall hand over my gift when I am next in Oxford.

Inevitably the anniversary brings back its memories.  Before she was
born I was living with Clare at White Hall in Chigwell Row, Essex.  In
June, near the expected birth date, Clare was collected by my
parents-in law and taken to Barry, South Wales, where my father-in-law
was stationed, and I went to stay with Dr.  Lindsey Batten and his
family at Lyndhurst Road in Hampstead.  Richard Batten had been a
contemporary of Connor at Cambridge and at medical school.  I had
booked in at

July 1998 225

Queen Charlotte's Hospital in Goldhawk Road, a decision which, given
the distance from Essex, now seems to me somewhat perverse.

While I was at Lyndhurst Road, the V-i bombardment began.  I can
remember gazing with incredulity at my first sight of a flying bomb,
which looked more like an aeronautical aberration than a weapon of war.
It was shaped like a plump fish, with two stubby wings like fins, and
carried at the tail a superstructure from which spurted great tongues
of fire.  It flew low and the noise was incredibly loud, something
between a rattle and a drone.  The V-i was the first unmanned terror
weapon to hit Britain and was much dreaded, partly because there was a
depersonalized malice about those pilotless rockets, but chiefly
because they were totally indiscriminate.

Worst of all was the moment when the engine cut out.  The silence then
seemed absolute.  It felt as if the whole of London was holding its
breath.

And then, after a few seconds, would come the explosion.  I greeted it
always with a mixture of relief and shame: relief that it hadn't fallen
on me, and shame that, in a sense, I had benefited from someone else's
tragedy.

Then labour began, and as I went into Queen Charlotte's the bombardment
was almost continuous.  Looking back, the morale in the eight bedded
ward was remarkably high.  Windows were kept wide open to prevent
flying glass.  We had our babies in cots by the side of the bed, and
when the bombardment began, were instructed to place one of our pillows
over the head of the cot.  There was, I remember, a shortage of linen
and the ward sister seemed as concerned about this as she was about the
constant sound of falling bombs and the cacophony above.  She would
raid the linen cupboard and then secrete fresh sheets and pillowcases
in our beds.  From time to time a sister from a neighbouring ward would
descend on us, turning over pillows and rummaging beneath the blankets
before bearing off her trophies in triumph.

Night time was the most difficult to endure with equanimity.  All the
babies were moved to the basement and our beds were wheeled out into a
corridor and placed against the walls.  It was felt that this would
give us the best chance of survival if the hospital received a direct
hit.  I can remember lying there silently weeping with that unfocused
misery which occasionally follows childbirth and which is made worse by
the feeling that one ought to be experiencing great happiness and
maternal fulfilment, not this debilitating and uncontrollable sadness.
My great fear was that the hospital would indeed receive a direct hit
and that in the confusion and carnage I would be unable to find my
baby.  Where exactly had they put the babies?  What if the stairs to
the basement were

blocked?  How in the darkness and choked with dust would I find the
right cot?  What if I were injured and couldn't get to the basement?  I
can remember praying: "O Lord, if you will let me out of here alive
with my baby I'll never complain again."  It is a prayer which, with
uncomfortable persistence, has returned throughout the years to haunt
me.

After I was discharged, I went with Jane to join my parents-in-law in
Barry.  I can remember with what joyous exultation I saw the sea for
the first time in years.  I stayed for long enough to get strong and
then returned to White Hall.  Unfortunately this coincided with the
bombardment by V-2.  rockets.  I found them far less frightening than
the V-is, partly because there was no warning.  The explosive power was
much greater, as was the noise of the explosion, but the fact that I
could hear it meant that I had survived.  There was a system whereby
the siren announced an imminent danger warning, but this, although
useful with the V-is, was ineffective with the V-2.S. There seemed no
point in trying to take any preventative measures and we all stayed in
our beds until the night when a rocket fell at the edge of Hainault
Forest.  By then we were all so used to the sound of explosives that we
woke momentarily and then turned again to sleep.

When daylight broke, I felt an unaccustomed coolness in the room and
discovered that the windows had been blown out and that Jane was lying
in her cot surrounded by shards of glass, any of which could have
killed her.  Gathering her up and going to the bathroom, I looked up
through the nonexistent ceiling to the sky.  Repairs were carried out
with remarkable speed during air raids, but after that night we all
moved to the cellar.

The authoritarian and largely misguided baby-rearing doctrines of Dr.
Truby King were still in vogue, and there were dire warnings about the
deplorable results if babies were not fed strictly at four-hourly
intervals.

But I could hardly let Jane cry at night when the cellar was occupied
by the humped bodies of three overworked doctors, the elderly cook, the
unmarried housemaid with her small daughter, and Clare.  Accordingly
Jane had only to whimper to be latched on to a not particularly
productive breast, where at least she got comfort if not much
sustenance.  The cellar door was left ajar for Mrs.  Price-Watt's
elegant pedigree cat who, blessed with an unpronounceable name, was
called Poo-Poo.  She would hunt at night, bringing her prey to eat on
our mattresses so that periods of wakefulness would coincide with the
crunching of seemingly innumerable bones and Mrs.  Price-Watts's
plaintive protests.

And then came the morning when Mrs.  Price-Watts rushed into my part of
the house to announce with a mixture of excitement and awe

July 1998 227

that the invasion of Europe had started.  Her eldest son was serving in
the RAMC with the airborne forces, so that it was a time of anxiety as
well as of huge relief and of expectation.  And as the invading armies
advanced, so the launch sites of the V-is and V-2S were overrun and
this most disagreeable of bombardments gradually ceased.  The children
have asked me why I didn't leave Essex and sometimes I wonder myself.
But it wouldn't have been easy.  Accommodation in safe areas was
difficult to find.  But I think the main reason was that after four
years of war, those of us living in or near London had got used to
staying put.

Over twenty years later, when Clare and her husband were in Huntsville,
Alabama, I met and walked in the woods with Germans who had been
sending off the V-i rockets and who had been recruited by the Americans
at the end of the war.  Even more ironic was to see a V-2 on display at
the local museum, and bearing the label: "The first intercontinental
rocket of the free world."  British visitors at least managed to get
the wording changed.

SATURDAY, l8TH JULY

Today I gave the address at the Annual General Meeting of the Jane
Austen Society, which was held, as it usually is, in the grounds of
Chawton House.  I was met at Alton station by Louise Ross and her
husband Charles, who kindly drove me to the venue.  I had previously
met Louise when I spoke at Dartington and it was she who found me my
treasured first edition of Emma.

The Jane Austen Society, which was founded in 1940 by Dorothy Darnell,
then with the prime object of preserving Chawton Cottage, is one of the
liveliest of literary societies.  The grounds of nearby Chawton House
are an appropriate place for the Annual General Meeting since the house
was the property of Edward Austen, who was adopted by his wealthy
kinsmen, the Knights, and who inherited Chawton with other properties
in 1812.  Until recently it was still owned by a member of the family
but had fallen into disrepair and there was considerable anxiety,
locally and among Austen devotees, about its future.  At one time it
was thought the grounds might become a golf course.  The house has now
been bought by a wealthy American lady who is restoring it and
proposes

to use it to house her library of the books of pre-Austen female
novelists.  It will thus become a study and conference centre and I
hope will occasionally also be opened to the general public.

Accompanied by the architect working on the restoration, I was able to
see round the house before I gave my talk.  Like most Elizabethan
manors it strikes one as very dark, with low ceilings, leaded windows
and wood-lined walls.  The date, 1588, on one of the immense fireplaces
identifies the age of the original building.  The work of restoration
is proving fascinating since the panel lings are of different dates and
some of the most recent work, once removed, reveals original
sixteenth-century wallpaper.

Even when restored the house will still be dark and it is hard to
imagine these tortuous corridors echoing to the laughter of Jane
Austen's numerous nephews and nieces, including the children of Edward
Knight, whose wife Mary died at his main property, Godmersham, after
giving birth to their eleventh child.  I wonder if Jane Austen, hearing
the news, remembered the tart sentence in a letter she wrote to her
niece Fanny after hearing that a neighbour had given birth to her
eighteenth child: "I would recommend to her and Mr.  Dee the simple
regimen of separate rooms."

Mary wasn't the only one of Jane Austen's sisters-in-law to die in
childbirth and I have no doubt that it was her fear of--indeed
repulsion at--the idea of possible yearly pregnancies and the risk of
early death which played a part in her refusal of the proposal of
Harris Bigg-Wither, which she at first accepted and then rejected next
day.  I don't think she would have been deterred by the lack of
romantic love.  If the match were sensible and advantageous and she
felt a genuine liking and respect, that would probably have been
enough.  Perhaps the liking and respect were not sufficiently strong
or, more likely, she knew the marriage would be fatal to her art.  She
seldom wrote or spoke of pregnant women without sympathy, and sometimes
a note of disgust.  Her books were her children and they were
sufficient.

We were fortunate in the weather.  A very large marquee had been
erected to accommodate about 700 people, some of them from the North
American society.  I am told the Society always has a sunny summer day
for its AGM, but this year hovering dark clouds made it look as if the
record was to be broken.  There was, in fact, a brief shower at the
beginning of my speech, but it was no more than a slight
inconvenience.

The talk--included here as the Appendix (page 243)--was well received,
largely, I think, because this audience could catch all the allusions
and no doubt could themselves add to the number of clues I had
discovered.

July 1998 229

After the talk I had a very busy signing session and then went with
Louise to join the congregation for Evensong at St.  Nicholas,
Chawton.

It was so crowded that we had to stand.  The service, largely
traditional Prayer Book, included part of a prayer composed by Jane
Austen and the hymn "Oh, for a Closer Walk with God" by her favourite
poet, Cowper.

Afterwards we visited the two restored gravestones of Jane Austen's
mother and her sister Cassandra.  I know we should be grateful to
Cassandra, who did much while they lived together with their mother at
Chawton Cottage to ensure her sister's privacy, to relieve her of some
household duties and to give her time for writing, but it is hard to be
sympathetic to someone who obviously settled into somewhat forbidding
spinsterhood at an early age and who destroyed so many of her sister's
letters.  I suppose she would argue that the eyes of posterity had no
right to see them, but it is still a regret.  It's possible that some
of them dealt with matters of family money, nearly always
controversial, but on which a family like the Austens would
particularly wish to be reticent.  It was fortunate for Jane Austen
that her brother Edward was given away for adoption and subsequently
became rich, since it enabled him to provide a home at Chawton Cottage
for his sisters and mother, but I suspect he could have provided one
earlier and endowed it more generously.

I first read Jane Austen when I was eight or nine years old and
attended the Sunday school attached to Ludford church.  There was a
small cupboard in the hall with a number of books which we children
could borrow.

Some, like The Wide, Wide World, A Peep Behind the Scenes and Jessicas
First Prayer were of depressing piety, but I also discovered there
Little Women and Pride and Prejudice.  It seems curious now that the
latter should appeal to a child so young, but I was hungry for books
and this was one I could both read and to an extent understand,
although the irony must have eluded me.  Jane Austen has remained my
favourite author.

It seems extraordinary, if indeed it is true, that she was once seen as
a gently born, pure-minded spinster, dutiful daughter, compliant
sister, affectionate aunt.  We don't need the letters to show us a
different Jane.

There is passion in the novels, even if it is too subtle to be
recognized by Charlotte Bronte.  And there was passion, too, in her
life, if only the passion of what the critic D.W. Harding described as
"regulated hatred."  To me it is far more like controlled resentment.
We have to resist the temptation to foist on to her a twentieth-century
sensibility; she was hardly deprived by domesticity of a university
education or a profession, but she must have known that, however
brilliant or successful her brothers,

it was she who had genius.  And yet, until she could earn from her
novels, she was totally without power to control her own life.  If her
father decided to move to Bath, then Jane moved, neither consulted nor
considered.

Every penny she had to spend came from her father or a brother.

Even Cassandra had the income from the 1,000 pounds left to her by her
fiance.  Jane had nothing.  No wonder she said, once the money started
coming in, that it was the pewter as well as the fame which she
relished.

We drove past the cottage on our way to Alton Station.  It looked
spruce, as if it had been recently re pointed and the little village
was full of cars.  When I first visited Chawton there was a great
quietness about the place and it was possible to believe that it looked
much as it had in Jane Austen's time.  With the bypass the road is
certainly quiet and outwardly the changes are small, but I suspect that
the television series have led to a large increase in visitors (there
were nearly 50,000 last year) so that the cottage will begin to acquire
that carefully preserved look of all monuments.

MONDAY, 2.0TH JULY

Today to Cambridge Crematorium for the funeral of Doris.  I arrived
much too early, as I usually do, and sat quietly in the garden. Between
the ordered rose beds and tended grass was scrubland red with poppies,
and beyond it I could see women working in a field, bending between
rows of unidentifiable crops.  I wondered how much they were paid for
such back-breaking work and who got most of the profit, the grower or
the supermarket.

I arrived from the station by taxi.  Drawing up at the crematorium, the
taxi driver said, "I believe in God, but all the rest is crap.  If God
did send His son to earth, assuming He had a son, I don't see why we
think He came as a human.  It's just our vanity.  It's making ourselves
too important to think God would bother to make His son look like us.
He'd be much more likely to make Him an eagle."  I felt unable to argue
this interesting theological point.

As Doris was an unbeliever, the service--if that is the appropriate
word--was humanist.  It was ably and sensitively conducted by a woman
humanist who had obviously taken considerable trouble to make it
appropriate to Doris's life and interests and who had visited Doris to
die.

July 1998 231

cuss with her what she would like.  All Doris's friends took part,
either with a reading or a personal reminiscence.  I have been to other
nonreligious funerals which have been less successful.  All ceremonies,
even the simplest, need preparation.  We may believe that we go into
the darkness like animals but we still have a human need to celebrate
with love and dignity this final rite of passage.

My mother's ashes are buried somewhere in this crematorium garden,
although "ashes" has always seemed a ridiculously anodyne word for what
is essentially the packaged grit of crushed bones.  She died in
Chesterton Hospital after an old age made unhappy by Parkinson's
disease and unrelievable mental anguish.  That final misery left me
wondering, as it still does, why those who live good lives relying on
the support and comfort of their religious faith should be denied its
solace at the end.  My father, who was then living in a small and damp
flat close to Poole Harbour, arrived for the cremation wearing his
boating clothes, not from any lack of respect but because I don't think
it occurred to him that it would be appropriate to change.  After the
service--although that is too dignified a word for the cold
impersonalities of this preliminary to hygienic disposal--he walked
round the garden surveying the shrubs with a gardener's eye, before
finally saying, "This one looks healthy," and deciding that the ashes
should be sprinkled beneath it.  I have no hope of identifying it
now.

His own death was more merciful.  He had been admitted to a residential
home overlooking Oulton Broad, where he settled very happily and might
have enjoyed a peaceful decade or two if he hadn't taken it upon
himself to scythe the lawn.  He was found dead among the tall grass and
wild flowers on a warm June afternoon.  The doctor said that he had
suffered a major heart attack and had almost certainly died instantly
and without pain.

Perhaps I, who am like him in so many ways, will be equally
fortunate.

SUNDAY, 26TH JULY

I read moving but distressingly frank extracts in The Times from a book
written by John Bayley about living with his wife Iris Murdoch now that
she is suffering from Alzheimer's.  I had never thought that anything
either reassuring or optimistic could be said about this terrible
disease, which nearly all old people dread, but John Bayley writes
that, so far

from diminishing his marriage, it has brought him and his wife even
closer.  Personally I would feel that closeness had been bought at far
too high a price.  Other people's marriages are, of course, always
mysterious, perhaps even to the partners themselves.  I was surprised
by John Bayley writing that one thing which had originally attracted
him to his wife was the mistaken belief that she lacked sexual appeal
to other men.  How could this have been possible?  I have always
thought her very lovely.  I don't know her well, and on the few
occasions when we did meet, felt myself inhibited by the knowledge of
her infinitely superior intelligence.

I can remember one summer when she and her husband drove me from Oxford
to Penelope and Jack Lively's garden party at Great Roll right.  All
the way she asked about my children and grandchildren, rather as if a
family were a strange phenomenon of which she had no knowledge and of
which she wished, as a novelist, to inform herself.  I felt that she
had a genuine interest in me and my family but this, I think, was part
of her special grace.  Another occasion, strong in memory, is when we
were both guests at Grand Night at the Middle Temple.  Before the
procession into the Great Hall, Iris and I were in the women's
cloakroom.

It was an occasion for dressing up and I had done my best.  I saw that
Iris was studying herself in the mirror, but without any apparent
interest in her image.  She was wearing shoes remarkably like carpet
slippers, a dirndl skirt in flowered cotton such as one might have worn
on a beach, what was obviously one of her husband's striped shirts, a
black velvet jacket and magnificent amber beads.  She looked absolutely
wonderful.

I don't know how interested she was in dress but her taste, although
erratic, produced a highly individual result.

One Christmas we were both invited to read a lesson at a service of
carols and lessons held at St.  Martin-in-the-Fields Church in aid of a
book trade charity.  I found myself sitting beside her in the front
row, placed in order ready to mount into the high pulpit when our time
came to read.  Iris asked me, "Are you a Christian?"  I began my usual
confused reply to this question.  I said that I regarded myself as one
and was a communicant member of the Church of England, although I had
difficulty with some theological doctrines and could hardly claim to be
a good Christian.  Iris said simply, "Oh I'm a Christian.  I don't
think I believe in God and I don't believe Jesus Christ was divine, but
I am a Christian.  I nearly became a Buddhist, but then I said to
myself, Don't be foolish, Iris.  You're a member of the Church of
England."  Can I really have remembered that conversation accurately?

July 1998 233

Now she inhabits some private world, partly accessible, apparently, to
her husband but which no other person is able to enter.  One wonders
whether it is a world of some contentment; one surely can't use the
word happiness.  I hope that she doesn't know what has happened to her.
That would be the final cruelty.  It seems to me in my spiritual
naivety that these diseases which destroy personality always raise
uncomfortable questions about the nature of the soul.

And should John Bayley have written this book?  Until it is published
one can't be sure.  But judging from extracts in The Times, I think
that he was wrong.  The biography is a testament of love and perhaps
writing it helped him to bear an almost intolerable daily burden.  But
would the Iris Murdoch of the novels and the philosophy have wanted
these intimate and sometimes demeaning details made public?  I think
not.  The great tragedy of Alzheimer's disease, and the reason why we
dread it, is that it leaves us with no defence, not even against those
who love us.

THURSDAY, 3OTH JULY

This evening I was the guest of Sir Brian Shaw, Chairman of the Port of
London Authority, and his wife at dinner on the PLA launch Royal
More.

Brian and Pennie called for me, their arrival coinciding with a
downpour which drenched Brian and myself, although we were under an
umbrella, and even penetrated the car when the door was opened.  I was
last a guest on the Royal More five years ago, and on that occasion we
were driven south of the river to cross Tower Bridge.  Unfortunately it
had jammed when we arrived and we had to be picked up by the launch
farther upriver at Westminster Pier.

I seem to be a Jonah on these occasions as tonight we were held up for
fifteen minutes on the Embankment because of an accident.  Eventually
the police directed traffic on the other side of the road into a single
file and allowed cars on the left-hand side to cross the reservation
and pass the scene.  The ambulance had departed and all one could see
were pieces of motor-cycle strewn across the road.  I suppose few of us
pass the scene of a serious accident without much the same thought; the
skeleton fingers reach out momentarily to twitch at our clothes and we
face our own mortality and, worse, that of those we love.  We think,
too, of that unknown

wife or mother now happily oblivious to the police appearance on the
doorstep which will change her life forever.  I said a brief silent
prayer for those concerned, and then the car moved on.  Those seconds
of sympathy for the unknown victim wouldn't, as I knew, overshadow a
happy evening.

One of the sadnesses of old age is that few experiences ever match the
exhilarating excitement of youth, but being on the Thames, particularly
at night, can still kindle in me that mixture of awe, wonder and
delight which I used to feel as a child when I saw the river.  The
launch is named after the lightship More, which marked the former
seaward limit of the Port of London Authority, and renamed Royal More,
after the Queen embarked for her River Progress at the time of her
Silver Jubilee.  The launch is, in fact, used as the royal barge when
the Queen travels by the Thames.  The journeys must be speedier, and
presumably more comfortable, than when Henry VIII was rowed in his
glorious royal barge from Westminster to visit his Chancellor, Thomas
More, at Chelsea.

We sailed--perhaps an inappropriate verb for a motor launch-upstream as
far as Chelsea, then turned and went downstream to the Thames Barrier.
The weather was changeable, sudden heavy squalls battering on the roof
of the cabin and a turbulent sky which brightened into layers of dark
grey and pale azure blue tinted with the red of the setting sun.  It
was getting dark by the time we reached the Barrier and, for me, one of
the most splendid sights of the evening was when the launch turned and
we saw through the huge shell-like hoods of the Barrier the gleaming
pencil of Canary Wharf.

Captain Peter Steen gave us during dinner a brief talk about the
Barrier and afterwards kindly let me have a brochure about its building
and functioning.  The engineering of the flood barrier is simple. There
is a series of movable gates positioned across the river, each gate
pivoted and supported between concrete piers which house the operating
machinery and control equipment.  The walls of the Barrier can be
sealed when necessary, and when they are not in use the gates rest out
of sight in concrete sills in the river bed.  If there is risk of a
dangerously high tidal surge, then the gates swing up through about 90
degrees from the river bed to form a continuous steel wall facing
downriver.

The Barrier is one of the most exciting constructions of our age.  On
each pier, gleaming hoods of stainless steel conceal the equipment.
These hoods are lined with timber and Captain Steen said that the
interior was for him almost as beautiful as the roof.  The beauty for
me resides not only in the power and size, but in that perfect marriage
of function and

July 1998 235

form.  Surely few large modern sculptures can compare with the Barrier
and yet we give honour to our artists and architects and few of us, if
any, know the names of the engineers responsible for the Barrier.
Before its completion the risk to London of severe flooding was very
real.  In his diary of th December 1663, Pepys wrote: "There was last
night the greatest tide that ever was remembered in England to have
been in this River, all Whitehall having been drowned," and in 1236 the
river overflowed, "and in the great Palace of Westminster men did row
with wherries in the midst of the Hall."  During my lifetime the last
flood in Central London was in 192.8, when fourteen people drowned, but
I remember with great clarity the disastrous flooding of the East Coast
and Thames Estuary in 1953, when 300 people lost their lives.

From the Barrier we saw the Royal Naval College at Greenwich
floodlit.

Admiral Sir John Brigstocke, who was one of my fellow guests, told me
that the Trinity School of Music was to have half the accommodation,
the Painted Hall will be preserved by the Maritime Museum and some of
the accommodation will go to Greenwich University.  I suppose there
could be no justification for retaining the Royal Naval College for the
Navy, but I felt a sadness that so much history and tradition will be
lost.

As we approached the glittering floodlit wonder of Tower Bridge the
helmsman asked if I would like to steer the launch through.  He said
that the wheel reacted very much like the wheel of a car.  I pointed
out that I didn't in fact drive, but he seemed prepared to take the
risk although, obviously, he stood very close to my shoulder.  There
was no other traffic on the river and we sailed through with great ease
before I relinquished the wheel to more expert hands as the launch was
brought alongside Tower Bridge Pier.

I first met Sir Brian Shaw when I was researching my novel Original
Sin.  We were both guests at a Grand Night at Gray's Inn, of which he
is a member, and I sat beside him at dinner.  He asked what I was
writing and I explained that I was researching a new novel, which was
to be set in the publishing world but on the River Thames.  I wanted
the Thames to run like a dark, somewhat sinister stream, bearing its
weight of history and linking characters, setting and incidents in the
book.  He very kindly offered to help with the research by letting me
explore the river from one of the PLA launches.  This I was able to do
and learned a great deal from his officers about the history of the
river.

During this research occurred one of those coincidences which seem to
feature with every book I write.  I visited the headquarters of the
River

Police at Wapping, which is the earliest police station in the United
Kingdom and has its own small but extremely interesting museum.  I was
able to read newspaper reports of the greatest of all Thames tragedies,
when in 1878 the paddle-steamer Princess Alice, returning loaded from a
trip to Sheerness, was mown down by a collier and 640 people drowned.
The passengers had mostly been poor Londoners enjoying with their
families an inexpensive trip to the seaside.  The mass drowning in the
darkness must have been horrific.  I used this incident in my book when
one of the characters, Frances Peverell, deeply unhappy in her private
life and worried about the future of the family firm, stands at her
window overlooking the river and seems to hear above the cries of the
gulls the screams of those drowning Victorians and, looking down at the
dark river splattered with light, imagines the pale upward faces of the
drowned children torn from their mothers' arms, floating like frail
petals on the tide.

I wrote the passage on my return home from Wapping as I often do when
images and atmosphere are fresh in mind.  Then I went to spend the
evening with my elderly friend Peggy Causton in her flat on Kensington
High Street.  She was crippled with bad arthritis and house-bound, and
each week we would spend at least one evening, and sometimes two,
playing Scrabble.  Peggy was one of the few really good people I have
known and I miss her.  On that evening she gave me a tattered
leather-bound book bearing the title Memorandum Book.  She said it was
found among her sister's effects but had nothing to do with her family
and, as it was Victorian and she knew my fascination with the Victorian
age, she thought it would be of interest.  I have it still and it is,
in fact, the memorandum book of a Sergeant of Marines.  His name
apparently was Westell, judging by the number of entries for the
Westell family, and his initial W. It is a curious record in which the
purchase of a black silk handkerchief for five shillings and sixpence
receives as bold an entry as that of his marriage and the birth of his
children.  He was much interested in home remedies, and one for bowel
complaints was probably effective and would be as useful today if one
could get hold of the laudanum: "Rhubarb--one pennyworth, magnesia--one
pennyworth, peppermint essence--one pennyworth, Laudanum--one
pennyworth."  There are notes on the movements of the ships, the number
of dead at the battle of Alma, and odd facts which caught his
imagination, such as the entry for 3rd August 1842, that children under
eight years of age would not be admitted to the British Museum.  But
when I first opened the book, it fell open at the following entry:
"Wednesday, 3rd September '78.

My son James was Drowned in the Princess Alice which sank.  The poor
felJuly 1998 237

low was found on the evening of jth September '78 and buried at St.

Thomas Church on the evening of 9th September '78."

FRIDAY, 31ST JULY

Tonight to a party at the Ritz given by George Carman, QC.  I knew only
about four people there of a mixed company of senior lawyers and judges
spiced with well-known faces from television and the media.

Robin Day was being his usual rumbustious and argumentative self.  He
and I engaged in a conversation with Lord Alexander about the recent
decision of the Appeal Court to quash the conviction of Derek
Bentley.

Bob supported it, Robin stoutly defended Judge Goddard.

I'm not sure how valid it is virtually to retry cases so long after the
event and to apply contemporary standards of justice, morality and
compassion to those operating some forty-seven years earlier, and I
have an uncomfortable feeling that, had I been a member of the jury, I
too would have found Bentley guilty.  He was certainly engaged with
Craig on a joint criminal enterprise.  The knuckle-duster with which he
was armed, as Lord Goddard had great satisfaction in pointing out to
the jury, was a formidable weapon and I find it hard to believe that he
didn't know his accomplice was armed.  But I would certainly have made
a very strong recommendation for mercy as I believe the jury did.  The
central injustice of this case surely rests on the fact that Bentley
was hanged while Craig, who actually fired the shot, could not, because
of his age, receive the death sentence.  Had Bentley also been sent to
prison and later released to live, as Craig has done, an un momentous
life, we should hardly have heard of this case.  The carrying out of
the death sentence, not the verdict, was the abomination, and for that
the Home Secretary, David Maxwell-Fyfe, and not the trial judge, was
responsible.  Lord Goddard and the jury expected Bentley to be
reprieved.  But if one is criticizing Lord Goddard, what of the three
Appeal Judges who heard Bent ley's appeal?  If it is the verdict not
the sentence which is the essential injustice, surely they bear a
considerable part of the responsibility.

But this can't be the only case in which a judge's summing-up has been
seen as prejudicial to the accused.  A far more grievous case in my
opinion is that of Edith Thompson, who was half-carried in a state of

insensibility to the scaffold in 1923 and hanged for her alleged
participation in the murder of her husband.  Edith Thompson was a
fantasist, almost the prototype of that dangerous species.  She was
married to a dull, worthy husband, Percy Thompson, and lived an equally
dull and worthy life in the eastern suburb of Ilford.  She took a
lover, a P&O liner steward, Frederick Bywaters, eight years younger
than herself and, in an obvious and somewhat desperate attempt to keep
him, wrote him passionate letters in which she described her attempts
to kill her husband by grinding up light bulbs and putting the pieces
of glass in his food.  There was absolutely no evidence that this had
ever happened, as pathologist Bernard Spilsbury attested at her trial.
The murder took place on 3rd October 1922 when Edith Thompson and her
husband were walking home after an evening at the theatre in London.
Bywaters sprang out and stabbed Thompson to death while Edith Thompson
perpetually cried, "Don't!  Oh don't!"

Bywaters had kept her letters and, had these been destroyed or not
admitted in evidence, it is probable that Edith Thompson would have
lived to an old age.  As it was, they were damning and the judge made
the most of them.  Edith Thompson was effectively hanged for adultery
not for murder.  But although the case has always left an unpleasant
stain on British justice, no relation ever campaigned for a pardon or
for the conviction to be quashed.

And what about Ruth Ellis, the last woman in England to be hanged?

She was executed on I3th July 1955 for shooting her lover David Blakely
shortly after she had suffered a miscarriage.  A verdict of
manslaughter would surely have been more just.  If we are to retry the
past, how shall we select the cases?  By the apparent injustice of the
original sentence or by family and public pressure?  And at what year
do we stop?

The judge in the case of Major Armstrong of Hay-on-Wye was also biased
to some extent against the prisoner.  As he was leaving the box after
cross-examination, the judge, Mr.  Justice Darling, intervened and
began to question him closely about the way the arsenic found in his
possession had been divided up into twenty small packets.  Armstrong
was claiming that the arsenic was to kill dandelions in the lawn.  Why
then did he not merely sprinkle the weed killer directly round each
root?

Armstrong was unable to give a convincing explanation and merely said
feebly that it seemed the most convenient way of doing it at the time.
It is possible, though not probable, that without this intervention
Armstrong might have gone free.

July 1998 239

On the other hand there are instances of judges being sympathetic to
the defendant and yet not influencing the jury towards an acquittal.

William Herbert Wallace, sentenced to death on 25th April 1931 for the
murder of his wife, is an example.  This time Mr.  Justice Wright
summed up favourably to Wallace, pointing out what he described as "the
loops and doubts" of evidence that was entirely circumstantial.  But
after only an hour's absence the jury returned a verdict of guilty. The
Court of Criminal Appeal subsequently quashed the verdict on the
grounds that it was unsafe having regard to the evidence.  This has
remained one of the most fascinating cases in English law and still
remains a mystery.  My own view is that Wallace was innocent.

The Prime Minister and Cherie Blair were at the party and said how much
they enjoy my books, which is, of course, always disarming to a writer.
He looked much younger than he does on television, and modestly
vulnerable--an impression which is surely fifty per cent misleading.

In our group around him was a woman professor of Law from America who
used the opportunity to badger him about the defects of the proposed
no-win, no-pay rule in cases which would previously have attracted
legal aid.  She said she would submit a paper and he promised to read
it.  I was told that the Lord Chancellor was expected but did not
arrive; he would have been a more suitable candidate for her
arguments.

I continue to find Tony Blair puzzling.  The problem is that I still
have no idea what drives him and his government.  What are the
principles, if any, on which he operates?  What aim has he beyond the
strong intention of winning a second term?  Beneath the charm and
conviviality, and apparent vulnerability and the humour, what has he of
force, intelligence and commitment?  I believe he has conscience and
sensitivity, qualities which, in a politician, are not always helpful
in a crisis.  I was left wondering whether he has the emotional and
physical resilience to meet disaster if and when it comes.  But the
like ability will prove a great asset and not only in Britain.  It is a
rare enough quality in a politician.

Admittedly it didn't help John Major; but no country is governable with
a majority of one.

August

SUNDAY, 2ND AUGUST

Tomorrow I shall be seventy-eight and, by the time this fragment of
autobiography is published, I shall be within sight of my eightieth
birthday.  If seventy-seven is a time to be in earnest, eighty is a
time to recognize old age, accepting with such fortitude as one can
muster its inevitable pains, inconvenience and indignities and
rejoicing in its few compensations.

Looking back at what I've written in the last twelve months has
reinforced my conviction that I could never have sustained the daily
chore of writing a diary.  The one I've produced is incomplete, with
more omitted than has been recorded.  I still find scraps of writing
which were obviously scribbled at the end of the day and intended for
the diary.  These notes of books read, people met, family occasions,
talks and lectures given are now indecipherable and I can't pretend
that it matters.  But at least I have an imperfect record of one year
and of the life of which it was part.

Youth is the time for certainties.  In old age we realize how little we
can be sure of, how little we have learned, how little--perhaps--we
have changed.  But looking back on my life I do know myself to be
greatly blessed.  I have met with little malice and much encouragement
and kindness.  I am sustained by the magnificent irrationality of
faith.  I have two daughters who have been a joy to me since the days
of their birth, sons-in-law whom I respect and greatly love, and five
grandchildren whose doings are a source of continued interest and
amazement.  I go into old age with the companionship of loving friends
even though we all know that we can't expect to travel the whole way
together.  And I have my work.  I shall continue to write detective
stories as long as I can write well, and I hope I shall recognize when
it is time to stop.  It gives

August 1998 241

pleasure to me and to thousands of readers.  No other justification is
needed.

The cells of my body must have renewed themselves countless times since
that eleven-year-old walked round Ludlow Castle carrying so carefully
the letter which would open to her the delights and opportunities of a
high-school education.  I inhabit a different body, but I can reach
back over nearly seventy years and recognize her as myself.  Then I
walked in hope--and I do so still.

Appendix

EMMA CONSIDERED AS A DETECTIVE STORY

Jane Austen Society AGM Chawton, Saturday i8th July 1998

It is both a privilege and a pleasure to give this talk at the Annual
General Meeting of the Jane Austen Society, although I accepted the
invitation with some trepidation; there is nothing I can say about Jane
Austen which will, I feel, be new to this audience of her devotees.  I
shall crave your indulgence before I begin.  It is also a particular
pleasure to be speaking at Chawton, where in Chawton Cottage Jane
Austen lived for the last eight years of her tragically short life. The
five years preceding the move to Chawton were unsettled with constant
changes of residence and were artistically unproductive with her
writing virtually at a stop.  It could be argued, therefore, that,
without this unpretentious final home in which she found that mixture
of rural peace, ordered domestic routine and mild stimulation which
best suited her character and her art, we might never have been given
the greatest of her novels.

My title this afternoon is "Emma Considered as a Detective Story."  It
may seem presumptuous as well as a little eccentric to consider one of
the greatest novels written in the English language with reference to
the conventions of popular genre fiction.  Apart from this presumption,
the detective story is, after all, usually concerned with murder and
there is no crime in Emma if we except the despoiling of Mrs.  Westons
turkey houses; few orthodox detective novels are so rural, so
peaceable, so remote in spirit from the crime and violence of Jane
Austen's own age or of ours.  But the detective story does not require
murder; Dorothy L. Sayers's Gaudy Night is an example.  What it does
require is a mystery, facts which are hidden from the reader but which
he or she should be able to discover by logical deduction from clues
inserted in the novel

2-43

244 APPENDIX

with deceptive cunning but essential fairness.  It is about evaluating
evidence, whether of events or of character.  It is concerned with
bringing order out of disorder and restoring peace and tranquillity to
a world temporarily disrupted by the intrusion of alien influences.

Emma, most faultlessly constructed of all Jane Austen's novels, is a
story in which peace and reconciliation are produced out of discord,
mysteries are elucidated and facts previously misinterpreted are at
last seen in their true light.  But there are other interesting
parallels with the traditional detective story.  The genre is often at
its most effective when the setting is self-contained and the people
are forced into a sometimes unwilling proximity.  Here in Emma we have
a self-contained rural community in which virtually all the characters
in the book either live in or near the village of Highbury or, like
Frank Churchill, are concerned with it.  Only Mrs.  Elton comes in as a
stranger when she marries the vicar.

We know them all completely in the sense that we can imagine what they
would say and how they would behave when we are not there.  We know
intimately the life of Highbury: the Crown Inn where the gentlemen
congregate to conduct their business or play whist, and where the ball
is held; Mrs.  Ford's shop and what she sells; the vicarage and the
lane to it; the Bates's apartment; Mrs.  Goddard's school; the
shrubberies of Hartfield and the strawberry-beds of Donwell Abbey.  The
scene is set.

Against this self-contained background is played out the drama of Emma,
handsome, clever and rich, whose energy and powers of mind are
fatefully underused so that she occupies herself in disastrous
interference in the lives of others.  Emma, in her zeal to manipulate
and control, misinterprets facts, emotions, situations, relationships,
and it is a fair guess that the nineteenth-century reader and the
modern reader, coming to the novel for the first time, would be seduced
by Jane Austen's cleverness in inducing us to share Emmas
misconceptions and misunderstandings.

At the end of the book, of course, chastened and penitent, she
recognizes not only the truths of other people, but the truth of her
own heart, and marries the one man who, loving her from her childhood,
brings her from destructive imaginings to happy reality.

What then are the mysteries in Emma?  All of them centre on a human
relationship.  There is Frank Churchill's secret engagement to Jane
Fairfax.

There is the hidden truth of Mr.  Knightley's love for Emma and Emma's
growing love for him.  There is Emma's misjudgement of Mr.  Elton's
matrimonial intentions.  There is the lesser mystery, or perhaps more
accurately described as a misunderstanding, centred on Emma's
interfering

APPENDIX 245

and injudicious attempts to find a husband for her protegee Harriet,
culminating in her horrified belief that Mr.  Knightley is in love with
Harriet and actually means to marry her.

But the central truth cunningly concealed at the heart of the novel is,
of course, the engagement of Frank Churchill to Jane Fairfax.  We share
the lively interest in Highbury in seeing Mr.  Weston's long-expected
son, and we may perhaps agree with Mr.  Knightley that the young man
certainly should have come earlier to pay his respects to his father's
new bride, poor Miss Taylor that was, as Mr.  Woodhouse would say.  But
it isn't until Jane Fairfax comes to Highbury to stay with her
grandmother and aunt, the Bateses, that Frank Churchill manages to free
himself from his demanding stepmother and comes to visit his father. We
should have spotted that clue.  Mr.  Weston brings him at once to see
Emma but after sitting together for a short time they part; Mr. Weston
has business at the Crown about his hay and a great many errands for
Mrs.  Weston to perform.

Frank does not accompany him, but goes instead to visit Mrs.

Bates and Miss Bates.  It would perhaps be rather more natural if he
stayed with his father, or went directly home to his stepmother, but at
the Bates's he will, of course, find Jane Fairfax, the main motive for
his coming to Highbury.  His excuse for the visit is that they had met
at Weymouth, but it is perhaps a little surprising that he should place
Miss Fairfax and her relations so high on his visiting list.  And when
there he stays much longer than a morning courtesy visit in those more
formal days would normally demand.  Next day he says to Emma:

"Ten minutes would have been all that was necessary, perhaps all that
was proper, and I had told my father I should certainly be at home
before him--but there was no getting away, no pause, and to my utter
astonishment I found .. . that I had been actually sitting with them
very nearly three-quarters of an hour."

Emma asks how Miss Fairfax was looking and, mischievously and
cunningly, Frank pretends not to admire her complexion:

"Miss Fairfax is naturally so pale, as almost always to give the
appearance of ill-health--A most deplorable want of complexion."

We are seduced into believing from the outset that Frank Churchill is
no admirer of Miss Fairfax's beauty.  It is when Frank, Mrs.  Weston
and Emma are strolling together in Highbury that Emma asks the
question

246 APPENDIX

which Frank must have known was inevitable, but which he must also have
dreaded.  Emma asks: "Did you see her often at Weymouth?  Were you
often in the same society?"  Frank has only seen Miss Fairfax in the
presence of her grandmother or aunt and they have had no opportunity to
discuss privately what their story will be.  It is a tricky situation
for Frank, and this is how Jane Austen deals with it:

At this moment they were approaching Ford's, and he hastily exclaimed:
"Ha!  This must be the very shop that everybody attends every day of
their lives, as my father informs me ... If it be not inconvenient to
you, pray let us go in, that I may prove myself to belong to the place,
to be a true citizen of Highbury.  I must buy something at Ford's."

The diversion gives him time to think, but he knows that the question
has to be answered.  A little later he voluntarily returns to it and
cleverly suggests that Emma should address it to Miss Fairfax,
saying:

"It is always the lady's right to decide on the degree of
acquaintance.

Miss Fairfax must already have given her account.  I shall not commit
myself by claiming more than she may chuse to allow."

Miss Fairfax has not given her account and, reticent and secretive, nor
will she.

It is during this walk together that Frank asks Emma's opinion of Jane
Fairfax as a musician and the next day we have one of the strongest,
perhaps most obvious, clues to the true relationship between Jane and
Frank.  Frank Churchill goes to London to get his hair cut.  The excuse
is, of course, not sensible, and he hardly troubles to make it
credible;

he would not have come to visit his new stepmother with his hair
uncut.

But he is of course going to London to purchase and arrange for the
delivery of the pianoforte to Mrs.  Bates's house.  It is not a grand
pianoforte but a solid square one, suitable for the smallness of the
sitting-room, which he has now seen for himself.  We first hear of its
arrival when Frank Churchill, with Emma and the rest of her Highbury
friends, is attending the dinner party at the Coles's.  Here Frank
colludes with Emma in her suggestion that the pianoforte comes not from
Colonel Campbell, which is the general opinion, but from Mr.  Dixon,

APPENDIX 247

who has married Miss Campbell but who is in love with Jane.  And Frank,
pretending to be convinced, finally admits that "I can see it in no
other light than as an offering of love."  It is, indeed, an offering
of love.

The clue here could not be stated more plainly.  It is at the same
Coles's dinner party that Emma detects Frank gazing fixedly across the
room at his love, and when Emma notices this, he recollects himself and
claims he cannot take his eyes away from Jane's outre hairstyle.  That
Jane herself very well knows who sent the pianoforte is apparent to us
from her embarrassment when it is referred to, an embarrassment which
Emma attributes to Jane's guilty love for her friend's husband.

Mrs.  Weston, kind-hearted and musical, was particularly interested by
the circumstance, and Emma could not help being amused at her
perseverance in dwelling on the subject; and having so much to ask and
to say as to tone, touch, and pedal, totally unsuspicious of that wish
of saying as little about it as possible, which she lEmma] plainly read
in the fair heroine's countenance.

Next day Emma and Harriet are walking to Highbury to buy ribbons in
Ford's when, looking down the Randalls road, they see Mrs.  Weston and
her son-in-law.  Frank is, of course, again calling on Jane Fairfax.
Mrs.

Weston says:

"My companion tells me that I absolutely promised Miss Bates last
night, that I would come this morning.  I was not aware of it myself. I
did not know that I had fixed a day, but I am going now."

Mrs.  Weston, of course, had not fixed a day, but Frank cannot wait to
see his love again, and no doubt to see the pianoforte.  He makes some
little demur at the visit, but he obviously has every intention of
accompanying Mrs.  Weston to the Bates's and not being diverted to
Randalls.

One of the strongest clues to the secret engagement is the amount of
time Frank Churchill spends with the Bateses.  Apart from being almost
the first house at which he calls, he manages to devise opportunities
of being with Jane on every possible occasion.  When the ball at the
Crown is mooted and the Westons and Emma are examining the
possibilities of the room there, it is he who suggests that Miss Bates
should be invited to join them.  Mrs.  Weston understandably is
unconvinced the garrulous and too

248 APPENDIX

obliging Miss Bates will be able to offer any real assistance, but she
is sent for and brings Jane with her, as Frank very well knew that she
would.

Then comes that moment, disagreeable to Emma but devastating to Jane,
when Frank Churchill is called back to Enscombe.  Here he calls on the
Bateses before he comes to say goodbye to Emma.  He almost tells Emma
his secret, imagining that her quick wit has probably already divined
it.  The conversation is as follows.  Emma says:

"Not five minutes to spare even for your friends, Miss Fairfax and Miss
Bates?  How unlucky!  Miss Bates's powerful, argumentative mind might
have strengthened yours."

"Yes--I have called there; passing the door I thought it better.

It was a right thing to do.  I went in for three minutes, and was
detained by Miss Bates's being absent.  She was out; and I felt it
impossible not to wait till she came in ... It was better to pay my
visit, then."  He hesitated, got up and walked to a window.

"In short," said he, "perhaps, Miss Woodhouse--I think you can hardly
be quite without suspicion."

He looked at her, as if wanting to read her thoughts.  She hardly knew
what to say.  It seemed like the forerunner of something absolutely
serious, which she did not wish.  Forcing herself to speak, therefore,
in the hope of putting it by, she calmly said:

"You were quite in the right; it was most natural to pay your visit,
then ..."

She heard him sigh.  It was natural for him to feel that he had cause
to sigh.  He could not believe her to be encouraging him.

Emma, deluded as ever, is, of course, half-expecting a proposal, or at
least a declaration of love.  In reality Frank Churchill, suspecting
that Emma has guessed his secret, has got very close to telling her
that he is engaged to Jane Fairfax.  A careful reading of the passage
shows clearly that what he is about to confide is related not to
Hartfield, but to his visit to the Bates's.

So Frank Churchill departs, to the distress of Highbury and, no doubt,
the satisfaction of Mr.  Knightley, and we come to the clue of Jane
Fairfax and the letters.  We do not hear of her going out to the post
office to collect her personal mail until Frank Churchill is no longer
at Highbury.  We learn that Jane is receiving letters, which she
prefers to collect herself, at the dinner party which Emma gives for
Mr.  Elton and his new bride, when

APPENDIX 249

Mr.  John Knightley, sitting next to Jane, expresses the hope that she
did not venture too far that morning during the wet weather.  He
says:

"The post office has a great charm at one period of our lives.

When you have lived to my age, you will begin to think letters are
never worth going through the rain for."

Immediately the kind Mrs.  Weston expresses concern that Miss Fairfax
has been out in the rain and the officious Mrs.  Elton pesters her with
offers that her servants can fetch the mail.  Jane, of course, is
quietly adamant.  In the early nineteenth century young men and young
women did not correspond unless they were engaged, and for Frank
Churchill to be known to be corresponding with Jane Fairfax would be
fatal to their secret.

And it is, of course, one of these letters which puts them in danger
again once Frank has returned.  This is in Chapter 5 of the third
volume of the novel, where Emma, Harriet and Mr.  Knightley, taking an
evening walk, fall in with Mr.  and Mrs.  Weston, Frank Churchill, Miss
Bates and Jane Fairfax.  Emma invites them all back to Hartfield, and
they are turning into the grounds when Mr.  Perry passes on horseback
and the gentlemen speak of his horse.  We then have this
conversation:

"By the bye," said Frank Churchill to Mrs.  Weston presently, "what
became of Mr.  Perry's plan of setting up his carriage?"

Mrs.  Weston looked surprised, and said, "I did not know that he ever
had any such plan."

"Nay, I had it from you.  You wrote me word of it three months ago.

"Me!  Impossible!"

Frank, obviously embarrassed, suggests that he must have dreamed of Mr.
Perry's carriage and attempts to change the conversation by suggesting
that Miss Smith walks as if she were tired.  But he cannot so easily
rid himself of the subject.  Miss Bates confirms that there was indeed
such an idea for Mrs.  Perry herself had mentioned it to Mrs.  Bates.
She said:

"Jane, don't you remember grand mamma telling us of it when we got
home?  I forget where we had been walking to--very likely to Randalls;
yes, I think it was to Randalls ... I never mentioned it to a soul that
I know of..  . Extraordinary dream indeed!"



APPENDIX

It was at that moment, when they were entering the hall, that Mr.

Knightley glances at Jane.  He sees confusion suppressed or laughed
away in Frank Churchill's face, who seems determined to capture Jane's
eye, but Jane passes between them into the hall and looks at neither.
The John Knightleys and their children are at Hartfield at this time
and a little later all the company sit themselves round a circular
table to play with the children's alphabets, forming words for each
other.  Frank Churchill places a word before Miss Fairfax.  She
discovers it, and with a faint smile pushes it away, leaving the
letters to be immediately mixed up with the others.  But Harriet picks
it up and, with the help of Mr.  Knightley, rearranges the letters to
form the word "blunder."  Harriet exultingly proclaims it and there is
a blush on Jane's cheek.  It is indeed a blunder.  Who else could have
conveyed to Frank the news of Mr.  Perry's proposal to set up a
carriage but Jane Fairfax.

And there are, of course, other clues.  If we wonder why Frank
Churchill should suddenly have remembered his obligation to his father
and his father's bride, we may ask ourselves why Jane Fairfax is cont
enc to remain so long at Highbury when she has a standing invitation
from Colonel and Mrs.  Campbell to join them in Ireland with the
Dixons.

Frank, of course, attempts to explain this, at least to Emma, by their
joint collusion in the idea that Jane cannot be with the Dixons since
she has seduced Mr.  Dixon's affections from his bride.  But this
doesn't prevent Emma from finding it strange that Jane should wish to
stay at Highbury.  As she says to Frank Churchill:

"I'm sure there must be a particular cause for her chusing to come to
Highbury instead of going with the Campbells to Ireland.  Here, she
must be leading a life of privation and penance; there it would have
been all enjoyment.  As to the pretence of trying her native air, I
look upon that as a mere excuse .. . What can anybody's native air do
for them in the months of January, February and March?"

But Jane, of course, cannot bear to leave Highbury.  Frank Churchill
could not possibly visit her either in London or in Ireland, but he had
every excuse for coming regularly to Highbury whenever he could obtain
Mrs.  Churchill's consent.

And then there is the telling incident at the Donwell Abbey strawberry
picking.  Jane is monopolized by Mrs.  Elton and officiously urged to
take the desirable situation as governess which Mrs.  Elton has
procured for her.

APPENDIX 251

Frank Churchill has promised to ride over from Richmond and is eagerly
awaited, but still has not arrived.  And then Jane, in obvious
distress, tells Emma that she must walk home, refuses the use of the
Hartfield carriage and sets off alone.  Fifteen minutes later Frank
Churchill arrives and for the first time Emma, and we, see him in a
serious bad temper: deploring the heat, almost wishing he hadn't come,
saying he's too hot to eat, and announcing that he's tired of England
and proposes, as soon as his aunt is well enough, to go abroad.  But
surely Frank Churchill, arriving fifteen minutes after Jane Fairfax
left, must have met her on the road.  He admits as much, but doesn't
even mention her name.  He says:

"You will all be going soon, I suppose; the whole party breaking up.  I
met one as I came--Madness in such weather!  Absolute madness!"

It doesn't occur to Emma, nor did it to me when I first read the novel,
that Frank Churchill's bad temper is the result of that encounter on
the road with a distressed and reproachful Jane.

Jane can bear it no longer.  She breaks off the engagement and becomes
ill.  Emma feels real compassion, but her efforts at help, and even her
arrowroot, are spurned.  Jane is consumed with jealousy and distress.

But then, of course, all ends happily.  Mrs.  Churchill, who was never
admitted by anyone to be seriously ill, justifies her hypochondria by
dying.  Frank Churchill has no difficulty in obtaining the easygoing
Mr.  Churchill's consent to his marriage, and returns triumphantly to
Highbury to claim his bride.

The news of the engagement is initially greeted with great distress by
the Westons, who were completely taken in by Frank's attentions to
Emma.  But when they realize that Emma's heart is untouched, they are
reconciled, as is the whole of Highbury.  But it is surprising that the
engagement should cause such widespread astonishment.  The clues to the
truth were there for them to deduce as they are for us.  But only the
perceptive Mr.  Knightley suspected the truth.

The reader has small excuse for misinterpreting Mr.  Elton's
matrimonial aspirations, but here Emma is particularly obtuse.  Mr.
Elton's visits to Hartfield are to commend himself to her, not because
he knows he will find Harriet there.  His tender sighings over
Harriet's portrait, painted by Emma, and the care he takes to convey
the precious consignment to London for framing, is because he aspires
to the artist not the sitter.



APPENDIX

The conundrum he writes and sends anonymously is obviously meant for
Emma, and even Emma is struck by the incongruity of ascribing bright
eyes and a ready wit to her friend.  Mr.  Elton has no intention of
missing Mrs.  Weston's dinner party just because Harriet Smith is ill.
And there is the evidence of character, as important in well-written
detective stories as it is in Emma, and always the most telling of
clues.  Mr.  Elton is the last person to court a penniless and
illegitimate girl.  As Mr.  Knightley tells Emma:

"Elton is a very good sort of man and a very respectable vicar of
Highbury, but not at all likely to make an imprudent match.  He knows
the value of a good income as well as anybody.  Elton may talk
sentimentally, but he will act rationally."

But Emma's final misunderstanding, that Mr.  Knightley seriously wishes
to marry Harriet, was perhaps fortunate.  It was only when she was
faced with this appalling possibility that Emma admitted the truth.
Mr.

Knightley must marry no one but herself.  When we come to consider Mr.
Knightley and his love for Emma--and he tells her at the end of the
book that he has loved her since she was thirteen--the strongest clue
is undoubtedly the amount of time he spends at Hartfield.  He does, in
fact, visit Emma and her father daily, sitting with them in the
evenings, and this can hardly be for the lively pleasure of Mr.
Woodhouse's company.

And Mr.  Knightley is always genuinely interested in every aspect of
Emma's welfare, even her reading list and her handwriting.  He takes
the trouble to correct her when he thinks her wrong and to praise her
when she does right, but he does it always as an equal, not as a
patronizing superior or with avuncular condescension.  He respects her
intelligence as well as admiring her beauty and to that beauty he is
certainly not impervious.  As he says to Mrs.  Weston, "I love to look
at her," and we can picture him as he sits, night after night, in the
drawing-room at Hartfield enduring the tedium of Mr.  Woodhouse's
conversation and the fire which Mr.  Woodhouse's tender habits require
on almost every evening of the year, resting his eyes on Emma's lovely
face before walking home to the coolness and solitude of Donwell
Abbey.

The second and perhaps the strongest clue is, of course, his
unreasonable jealousy of Frank Churchill.  The announcement that Frank
is at last to visit his father and his father's new wife causes a
general flutter of anticipation in Highbury which Emma shares.  Mr.
Knightley must be

APPENDIX 253

aware that the Westerns hope that Emma and Frank will fall in love.
Mr.

Knightley betrays jealous disapproval of the young man even before his
arrival.  When Frank Churchill defers his first visit because of
pressure from Enscombe, no one is more censorious than Mr. Knightley.

"There is one thing, Emma, which a man can always do if he chuses, and
that is, his duty; not by maneuvering and finessing, but by vigour and
resolution."

Emma argues vigorously that without being acquainted with Enscombe and
Mrs.  Churchill's temper they should not be too hard on Frank
Churchill, and accuses Mr.  Knightley of being determined to think ill
of him.

"Me!  Not at all," replies Mr.  Knightley, rather displeased, "I do not
want to think ill of him.  I should be as ready to acknowledge his
merits as any other man, but I hear of none, except what are merely
personal, that he is well grown and good-looking, with smooth,
plausible manners."

Their argument continues, and when Emma points out that her love for
Mr.  and Mrs.  Weston gives her a decided prejudice in Frank
Churchill's favour, Mr.  Knightley says crossly, "He is a person I
never think of from one month's end to another," a somewhat surprising
assertion since he has obviously been giving a great deal of thought to
Mr.  Churchill's defects of character and behaviour and has spent the
last half-hour vigorously arguing about him.

And when Frank Churchill does at last arrive--a day early, which is a
little inconsiderate of him bearing in mind Mrs.  Weston's desire to
have everything at Randalls perfect for his arrival--only Mr. Knightley
doesn't join in the general praise of him throughout the parishes of
Don well and Highbury.  Hearing about his trip to London to have his
hair cut, he comments, "Hum!  Just the trifling silly fellow I took him
for."

He even criticizes his handwriting.

"I do not admire it.  It wants strength.

It is like a woman's writing."  And Mr.  Knightley is alone in
disliking the prospect of the ball at the Crown where, of course, Miss
Woodhouse and Mr.  Frank Churchill will undoubtedly shine.  Mr.
Knightley, the normally fair-minded and judicious Mr.  Knightley, can't
say a good word for Frank Churchill until, at the end of the novel,
"Emma is his Emma by hand and word" and we read:



APPENDIX

If he could have thought of Frank Churchill then, he might have deemed
him a very good sort of fellow.

And if Mr.  Knightley is constantly in Emma's company, continually
concerned with her welfare and her conduct, he is certainly seldom out
of Emma's mind.  Every male character is judged against him.  Much as
she liked Mr.  Weston's open manners and friendliness to all,

she felt, that to be the favourite and intimate of a man who had so
many intimates and confidantes, was not the very first distinction in
the scale of vanity .. . General benevolence, but not general
friendship, made a man what he ought to be.--She could fancy such a
man.

It is of course a precise description of Mr.  Knightley.  And when
Emma, accompanied by Harriet, pays a wedding visit to the newly married
Eltons, there is another clue given with great subtlety.  Mrs.  Elton
says:

"

"My friend Knightley' had been so often mentioned that I was really
impatient to see him; and I must do my caro sposo the justice to say
that he need not be ashamed of his friend.  Knightley is quite the
gentleman.  I like him very much.  Decidedly, I think, a very
gentleman-like man."

Emma can hardly contain her indignation until they have left the
house:

"Insufferable woman!"  was her immediate exclamation.

"Worse than I had supposed.  Absolutely insufferable!  Knightley!--I
could not have believed it.  Knightley!--never seen him in her life
before, and call him Knightley!--and to discover that he is a
gentleman!

A little upstart, vulgar being, with her Mr.  E, and her caro sposo,
and her resources, and all her airs of pert pretension and under-bred
finery.  Actually to discover that Mr.  Knightley is a gentleman!  I
doubt whether he will return the compliment, and discover her to be a
lady."

She then wonders what Frank Churchill would say about it if he were
here and adds:

APPENDIX 255

"Always the first person to be thought of!  How I catch myself out!

Frank Churchill comes as regularly into my mind!"

But she hasn't, of course, been thinking of Frank Churchill.  It has
been Mr.  Knightley who came first into her mind, Mr.  Knightley of
whom she constantly thinks.

When I discussed this talk with my daughter Jane, she reminded me of
another example of Emma's preoccupation with Mr.  Knightley, which she
described as "the clue of the spruce beer."  Harriet is demonstrating
her total recovery from her infatuation with Mr.  Elton by destroying
in front of Emma her "most precious treasures"; the court plaister
which Mr.  Elton had worn on his cut finger and the end of an old
pencil which Mr.  Elton had used to make a note in his pocketbook about
Mr.  Knightley's recipe for brewing spruce beer.

"I do remember it," cried Emma; "I perfectly remember it.  Talking
about spruce beer.  Oh!  yes--Mr.  Knightley and I both saying we liked
it, and Mr.  Elton's seeming resolved to learn to like it too.  I
perfectly remember it.  Mr.  Knightley was standing just here, was not
he?  I have an idea he was standing just here."

And then there is her passionate argument with Mrs.  Weston when her
old governess suggests, after the ball, that Mr.  Knightley might wish
to marry Jane Fairfax.  Emma, of course, has convinced herself that her
dislike of Mr.  Knightley marrying anybody is based on her wish that
her nephew, Henry, shall eventually inherit the Donwell property.

"Mr.  Knightley and Jane Fairfax!"  she exclaims.

"Dear Mrs.

Weston, how could you think of such a thing?--Mr.  Knightley!

--Mr.  Knightley must not marry!  You would not have little Henry cut
out from Donwell?"

Then, a little later:

"I am sure he has not the least idea of it.  Do not put it into his
head.  Why should he marry?  He is as happy as possible by himself;

with his farm, and his sheep, and his library, and all the parish to
manage ... he has no occasion to marry, either to fill up his time or
his heart."

And the argument continues with Emma increasing in virulence against
the idea.  As Mrs.  Weston says:

256 APPENDIX

"If Mr.  Knightley really wished to marry, you would not have him
refrain on Henry's account, a boy of six years old, who knows nothing
of the matter?"

We may suspect that Emma's vehemence has very little to do with little
Henry and his inheritance.  Later Emma cannot resist a delicate hint to
Mr.  Knightley about his admiration for Jane Fairfax, and is told:

"That will never be ... Miss Fairfax, I dare say, would not have me if
I were to ask her, and I am very sure I shall never ask her."

Emma compliments him on his lack of vanity and Jane Austen writes:

He seemed hardly to hear her; he was thoughtful--and in a manner which
shewed him not pleased, soon afterwards said: "So you have been
settling that I should marry Jane Fairfax?"

"No, indeed I have not.  You have scolded me too much for match-making
for me to presume to take such a liberty with you.

What I said just now, meant nothing .. . Oh!  no, upon my word, I have
not the smallest wish for your marrying Jane Fairfax, or Jane anybody.
You would not come and sit with us in this comfortable way, if you were
married."

Here again there is a subtle clue.  Why should Mr.  Knightley be so
displeased at the suggestion he might be interested in Jane Fairfax,
the beautiful, accomplished and elegant Jane?  Surely it is not the
gossip which has displeased him; Highbury lives by gossip.  No, it is
the thought that Emma can discuss the prospect of his marrying another
woman with such apparent equanimity.

Then there is the long-deferred ball at the Crown, one of the most
brilliant chapters in the book and one in which there are clues to all
the relationships as well as the incident which gives rise to further
misunderstanding when Mr.  Knightley dances with Harriet and she first
imagines that she is in love with him.  The evening is packed with
interesting little incidents.  There is the moment when Mrs.  Elton
says to her husband:

"Oh!  you have found us out at last, have you, in our seclusion?-I was
this moment telling Jane, I thought you would begin to be impatient for
tidings of us."

APPENDIX 257

"Jane!"--repeated Frank Churchill, with a look of surprise and
displeasure.--"That is easy--but Miss Fairfax does not disapprove it, I
suppose."

Emma asks in a whisper:

"How do you like Mrs.  Elton?"

"Not at all."

"You are ungrateful."

"Ungrateful!--What do you mean?"  Then changing from a frown to a
smile--"No, do not tell me!--I do not want to know what you
mean.--Where is my father?--When are we to begin dancing?"

Emma could hardly understand him; he seemed in an odd humour.

Emma is referring to Mrs.  Elton's recent praise of Frank to his
father.

"A

very fine young man indeed, Mr.  Weston.  A very handsome young man,
and his manners are precisely what I like."  Frank, of course, thinks
that Emma is referring to Mrs.  Elton's condescending kindness to his
secret love.

Mrs.  Elton, as the bride, opens the ball with Mr.  Weston, with Frank
Churchill and Emma following.  But even when she is dancing with Mr.

Churchill Emma's eyes and thoughts are with Mr.  Knightley.  Jane
Austen writes:

He could not have appeared to greater advantage perhaps anywhere, than
where he had placed himself.  His tall, firm, upright figure, among the
bulky forms and stooping shoulders of the elderly men, was such as Emma
felt must draw everybody's eyes;

and, excepting her own partner, there was not one among the whole row
of young men who could be compared with him.--He moved a few steps
nearer, and those few steps were enough to prove in how gentle manlike
a manner, with what natural grace, he must have danced, would he but
take the trouble.

He does later take the trouble, when he leads out Harriet to the set
after she has been disgracefully snubbed by Mr.  Elton.  But, at the
end of the chapter, he dances with Emma.

fe.

258 APPENDIX

"Whom are you going to dance with?"  asked Mr.  Knightley.

She hesitated a moment, and then replied, "With you, if you will ask
me."

"Will you?"  said he, offering his hand.

"Indeed I will.  You have shown that you can dance, and you know we are
not really so much brother and sister as to make it at all improper."

"Brother and sister!  no, indeed."

Those few words surely tell us all we need to know about Mr.
Knightley's feelings for Emma.

There is one moment of physical intimacy between Mr.  Knightley and
Emma which should in its delicacy and, for me, its erotic charge, tell
us that they are in love.  Mr.  Knightley, obviously convinced that
Emma and Frank Churchill will soon be engaged, unexpectedly determines
to go and stay with his brother and Emma's sister, and comes to
Hartfield to take his leave.  He cannot bear to be in Highbury when the
engagement is announced.  Emma has just returned from visiting Miss
Bates to try to make amends for her deplorable unkindness at the Box
Hill picnic.

Learning from Mr.  Woodhouse where Emma has been, Mr.  Knightley looks
at her "with a glow of regard, as if his eyes received the truth from
hers, and all that had passed of good in her feelings were at once
caught and honoured."  Jane Austen writes:

She was warmly gratified--and in another moment still more so, by a
little movement of more than common friendliness on his part.--He took
her hand;--whether she had not herself made the first motion, she could
not say--she might, perhaps, have rather offered it--but he took her
hand, pressed it, and certainly was on the point of carrying it to his
lips--when from some fancy or other, he suddenly let it go ... The
intention, however, was indubitable .  nothing became him more.--It was
with him of so simple, yet so dignified a nature.

It is one of the most touching moments in the novel.

All detective stories have that final chapter or chapters in which the
clues are explained, misunderstandings resolved, errors corrected and
the truth at last revealed.  Jane Austen does this in three ways.  Mrs.
Wes ton visits her daughter-in-law-to-be, then calls at Hartfield to
explain to

APPENDIX 259

Emma the full story of Jane Fairfax's ill-begun but now prosperous love
from Jane's point of view.  We have Emma's musings as she recalls with
remorse her humiliating errors of understanding and of fences against
good taste.  And we have Frank Churchill's long explanatory, self
justifying letter to his stepmother, which Mrs.  Weston, of course,
shares with Emma.  This device of explaining the mystery in epistolary
form is not uncommon in detective fiction.  In Frank's letter the
significance of all the moves in this game of love and misunderstanding
are clearly explained.  Jane Fairfax's increasing unhappiness at the
deception she was practising, his own sanguine expectations that
somehow all would come right, his deliberate courting of Emma to divert
attention while he was convinced that Emma herself was indifferent to
him and, indeed, shared his secret, the quarrel with Jane Fairfax after
the strawberry picking and her letter breaking off the engagement.  I
suspect that when, as a girl, I first read Emma I was left wondering
why I hadn't seen it all myself.

And did they indeed live happily ever after?  Mr.  Woodhouse is made so
miserable by Emma's engagement that he can only be reconciled to the
marriage by their suggestion that Mr.  Knightley should live at Hart
field.  As Mr.  Elton says, "rather he than me."  G. B. Stern, in a
book entitled More Talk of Jane Austen published in 1950, looks ahead
for seven years and suggests that indeed there were great strains on
the marriage when Mr.  Knightley was required continually to suffer Mr.
Woodhouse's companionship while his and Emma's children were at Donwell
Abbey.

G. B. Stern gets over the difficulty by conveniently killing off Mr.
John Knightley so that Isabella can return to her father's house.  Emma
takes her rightful place at Donwell Abbey.

Well, that is all conjecture and, as Frank Churchill says, "Sometimes
one conjectures right, and sometimes one conjectures wrong."  I think
that I shall choose to believe the author when she tells us so plainly
at the end of Emma,

the wishes, the hopes, the confidence, the predictions of the small
band of true friends who witnessed the ceremony were fully answered in
the perfect happiness of the union.

Index

Adie, Kate, 160	Bacon, Francis, 71, 158

adoption, 106, 107	Bagnold, Enid, 214, 215

Allen, Sir Philip, 166	Bain, Donald, 124

Allingham, Margery, 12, 16, 33, 127, 129	Bain, Renee, 12.4

All Quiet on the Western Front, 154	Barker, Pat, 216

Alzheimer's disease, 231-3	Batten, Richard, 224

Ambler, Eric, 19	Bawden, Nina, 193

Amis, Kingsley, 80; The Green Man, 171	Baxendale, Helen, 200--202

Anglia Films, 119, 2.02	Bayley, John, 231-3

Anglicanism, 84-90	BBC, 13, 41-2, 56, 67, 78, 94, 101, 121, 158-9,

Anthony, John, 80, 81	160, 176, 218-22; James as a Governor of,

Any Questions, 207-9	218-22; management, 218-22

Arlen, Michael, The Green Hat, 94	Beatrice (granddaughter of P. D. James), 49,

Armstrong, Herbert Rowse, 197--8	100, 154, 240

Armstrong, Katharine, 197-8	Beer, Gillian, 101

Armstrong, Major, 238	Belfast, 169

arsenic poisoning, 184, 197-8, 238	Bell, Mary, 196-7

art, 63-5, 70-1, 142, 157-8, 162, 165, 177, 215 Bell, Vanessa, 38

Arthur, Gavyn, 75, 78, 91	Benn, Tony, 63, 64

arts festivals, 195, 198-9	Bentley, Derek, 237

Arvon Foundation, 189	Berlin, 193-5; fa\\ of Berlin Wall, 193-5

Aschehoug, 69-70	Bernstein, Robert, 201

Assembly Rooms, 116	Bigg-Wither, Harris, 228

Association of Women Solicitors and	Birch, Dinah, 193, 222, 223

Lawyers, 136	Birmingham, 160

Atkinson, Will, 101	Birt, John, 219

Auden, W. H., 99, 212; "The Guilty Vic-	Birth of a Nation (film), 29

arage," 212	Blackstone, Tessa, 169

Austen, Cassandra, 229, 230	Blair, Cherie, 239

Austen, Jane, xii, 16, 79, 80, 140, 141,	Blair, Tony, 239

227-30; Emma, 227, 243-59; James on,	Blake, Nicholas, 212; The Beast Must Die,

228-30, 243-59; Mansfield. Park, 97; Per-	212; A Tangled Web, 212

suasion, 76; Pride and Prejudice, 97, 229;	Blake, William, 40

Sense and Sensibility, 9	Blakely, David, 238
Austen (Jane) Society, 227--30; Annual Gen- Blatch, Emily, 168

eral Meeting, 227, 228-9, 243	Blenheim Palace, 187

Austen-Leigh, James Edward, 80	Bloomsbury Group, 38-9

Australia, 55, 79, 83, 99, 105	Bogaards, Paul, 100

author tours, 147--51	Booker Prize, 94, 101--3, I22> l&9

autism, 170,172	Book of Common Prayer, 85, 89, 90, 142


26l



262	index


Books and Bookmen, 9	childbirth, 225, 228


Booth, Martin, The Doctor, The Detective	child criminals, 159, 184-5, 196-7

and Arthur Conan Doyle, 32-3	Children and Young Person's Act (1969),

Boston University, 55	I43~4

Brett, Simon, 68	Children of Men, The, 12, 199

Brigstocke, Admiral Sir John, 235	Children's Act (1975), 106, 107

British Airways, 151	Chipping Norton, 106

British Council, 119, 121, 136, 193	Choir School (later Pilgrims' School), 5-7

British Library, 188	Christie, Agatha, 13, 16, 109, 128, 129

British Museum, 162, 236	Christ's College, 42, 155-6

British School, Ludlow, 24-7, 30, 84	Church of England, 30-1, 37, 89-90, 142,

Bronte, Charlotte, 16, 117, 138, zxy;Jane	174, 175, 232

Eyre, 23, 97	City of London College, 12, 113
Bronte, Emily, 16, 138; Wuthering Heights, 97 Clare, Anthony, 196, 197

Buck, Michele, 119, 200-202	Clare (daughter of P. D. James), 10, 14, 32,

Bulger, James, 185	43, 56, 82, 83, 92, 113, 115, 154, 160-2, 205,

Burney, Fanny, ix	206, 224, 226, 227, 240

Bywaters, Frederick, 238	Clare Arts Festival, 210-11

Clare College, 87

Callaghan, James, 165	Clark, Alan, x

Call My Bluff (TV show), 160	Clayton, Margaret, 164

Cambridge, 31, 36, 41, 54, 60, 82, 84, 87, 101,	Colebrook House, 5--7

121, 154--7, 174	collaboration, 159--60

Cambridge County High School for Girls,	Collins, Wilkie, 17-18; The Moonstone, 17-18

31, 44-9, 56, 84, 126	Coiwell, Maria, 143-4

Cambridge Crematorium, 230-1	Compton-Burnett, Ivy, 70

Campbell, Naomi, Swan, 149	Conan Doyle, Arthur, 18, 32-3; Sherlock

Campbell, Patrick, 160	Holmes stories, 32-3, 69

Canada, 124-7	Connor (husband of P. D. James), 10, 12,

Carman, George, 193, 237	19-20, 38, 138, 156, 179, 224; death, 115;

Catholicism, 86, 98, 135-6	mental illness, 12, 20, 113, 115, 126,179-82;

Causton, Peggy, 195, 136	war service, 43

Certain Justice, A, 69, 75, 90-3, 97, 135, 136,	Conservative Party Conference, 61

196; French edition, 191--2; mass-market	Conversazione on Culture and Society, 75--6

edition, 119; publication, 78, 79, 90-3;	copy-editing, 58

television adaptation, 119, 161, 224;	Cordelia Gray television series, 200-203

themes, 78, 90, 91, 193; trade paperback,	Corder, William, 94-5

153	Coren, Alan, 160

Chandler, Raymond, 18-19	Cornwall, Patricia, 127, 129

Chapel Royal, St. James Palace, 173-4	Countryside March, 164-5

chaperonage, 38	Courtos, John, 80-1, 158

characterization, 116-19, 139-41; television	Covehithe, 22

and, 200-203	Cover Her Face, 9-14; critics on, 9-11; publiCharles
I, King of England, 173	cation, 13-14, 44; writing of, 11-13

Charminster Conservative Party, 109	Cowper, William, 229

Chatsworth, 213-16	Cranmer, Thomas, 142-3

Chawton Cottage, 227-30, 243	crime, real-life, 104-5, I2^, 237; by children,

Checkland, Michael, 219	159, 184-5, 19^~7> DNA evidence, 209;

Cheltenham Literary Festival, 99-100	English justice system, 104-5, :59> J66-8,

Chesterton, G. K., 184	183-5, 190, 207-9, 237~9; see also specific

child abuse, 29, 143--4	cases

INDEX	263


crime fiction, 12-14, 16-19, 32~3> 55> 58, 61,	Drabble, Margaret, 211


139-41; American, 18-19; author's motives	Dublin, 169

in, 214--15; characterization, 116--19,	Dunant, Sarah, 129

139-41; class divisions, 128-9; "Emma	Durham University, James's honorary degree

Considered as a Detective Story" (lee-	from, 216-17

ture), 243-59; female writers of, 16-17, J9>	Dusty, 51-2

33, 59, 79-81,127-9, 2O7; forensics, 33-5,	Dyce, William, Pegwell Bay, 157-8

104-5, I27~9> 2O°; history of genre, 17-19,

33-5, 127-8; male writers of, 19, 32; mod-	East Anglia, 15-16, 82, 104, 156, 210

ern, 34-5, 69-70, 127; moral responsibility	Ecosse Films, 200; Cordelia Gray series,

and, 140-1; motive for murder in, 69-70;	200-203

of 19305, 32-4, 69, 79, 127-9, I59> 2I2;	Edinburgh, 178, 182-5

readers of, 148; see also specific authors and	Edinburgh, Duke of, 135

books	Edinburgh University, 169

Critchley, Tom, The Maul and the Pear Tree	Edward VIII, King of England, 60

(with P. D. James), 166-8	Eleanor (granddaughter of P. D. James), 83,

Crook, John, A History of the Pilgrim's	218, 240

School, 5, 6	Eliot, George, 16,138,175; Adam Bede, 117

Crowe, Admiral, 63	Eliot, T. S., 35

Cumberland, Richard, 139	Eliot, Valerie, 35

Czechoslovakia, 119-21, 155	Elizabeth II, Queen of England, 61-2, 130,

150, 210, 218, 234

Dalgliesh, Miss, 48	Elletson, Anne, 101

Dallas, 149-51	Elliott, Charles, 136

Dallas Morning News, 150	Ellis, Ruth, 238

Darling, Mr. Justice, 238	Ely, 36-7

Darnell, Dorothy, 227	"Emma Considered as a Detective Story"

Claws, Robert, 160	(lecture), 243-59

Day, Robin, 237	Enfants du Paradis, Les (film), 156

Dayton Daily News, 147	England, 49, 125; criminal law, 104-5, J59>

death, 40-1, 195, 223-4, 230-1; penalty,	166-8, 183-5, !9°. 207-9, 237~9;

104-5, IQ6, 237-9	educational system, 44-9, 168-9, 170,

Death of an Expert Witness, 98, 107, 144; film	220; female employment, 125-6;

of, 202	government, 60-2, 130-2, 159, 167,

Dennys, Louise, 124, 126,127	168--9, I7°> J86, 239; Millennium Dome,

Department of Health and Social Security,	162-3; post-World War I, 27-31, 48-9;

143, 144	Royal Family, 60-3; sexual abuse,

detective fiction, see crime fiction	29; World War I, 24, 154, 155; World

Devices and Desires, 4, 15, 98; themes, 141;	War II, 41-3, 154-7, 225"7; see a^° specific

writing of, 15-16	cities

Diana, Princess of Wales, 40; death of, 56-7,	English language, 75-6, 130, 136, 174

60-3, 150-1, 162, 175	Erskine, Barbara, 170

di Caprio, Leonardo, 152	escapist literature, 19

Dickens, Charles, 77, 138, 160; Bleak House,	Essex, 42-3, 224-7

117; David Copperfield, 97; Oliver Twist,	Essex Autistic Society, 170, 172

n7	Evans, Matthew, 92

DNA evidence, 209	Evelyn, John, ix
doctors, 27-8, 112

Dorset Arts Festival, 190	Faber and Faber, 14, 58, 68, 80, 90-3, 98, 101,

Dorset Victim Support, 191	116, 135, 153, 160, 215

Downie, Penny, 224	Fayard, 191

264	INDEX


female crime writers, 16-17, 19, 33, 59, 79-81,	Hammett, Dashiell, 18-19


127--9, 207; see also crime fiction; specific	hanging, 184, 238

writers	Hanratty, James, 208 and n., 209

Festival Theatre, Cambridge, 20	Harding, D. W., 229

films, 29-30; British industry, 156; French,	Hardy, Thomas, 78, 140

156; Hollywood, 152; rights to James's	Hare, Cyril, Tragedy at Law, 14

books, 108; war years, 154, 156; see also spe-	Harris, Leo, 9

cificfilms	Harvey-Wood, Harriet, 62

Flack, Joyce, 15, 195	Hastings, Selina, 102, 185

Flaubert, Gustave, Madame Bovary, 117-18	Hattersley, Roy, 136

Foot, Paul, 208, 209	Hay Festival, 195-9

foreign languages, 192	Health Service, 11--13, ni--16, 125--6, 220

forensic medicine, 33-5, 104-5, 127-9, 1%1>	Heaton, Carol, 14, 200

200	Hebblethwaite, David, 142, 174

Forster, E. M., 79	Heinrich, Vern, 126

fox hunting, 164	Henry V(film), 156

Fram (ship), 69, 70	Henry VII, King of England, no

France, 55, 183, 185, 191-2, 208	Henry VIII, King of England, 234

Francis, Clare, 68	Herbert, Rosemary, 159--60

Francis, Dick, 3--4, 61, 132--4; lOlb. Penalty,	Hess, Edward, 75

61	Heywood Hill Literary Prize, 213-14

Francis, Mary, 3-4, 132-4	Hillary, Richard, 192-3; The Last Enemy,
Free Czech Air Force, 121	192

French, Marilyn, 70, 71	Hillary (Richard) Memorial Lecture, 192-3

Freud, Lucian, 71	Hiller, Dame Wendy, 203

Fry, Roger, 39	Hindley, Myra, 151

Fulbourne Mental Hospital, 50--2	Hiroshima, 43, 195

Fusco, Dominique, 191	Hirst, Damien, 65

Fyfield, Frances, 23, 55, 58, 74, 78	Hitler, Adolf, 154, 155, 194

Holland Park, 157, 178

gas lighting, 27	Holroyd, Michael, 97, 211

Germany, 120; fall of Berlin Wall, 193-4;	Home Office, 106-8, 115-16, 125, 143-4, :64>

World War II, 154, 155, 156, 227	165--6, 178, 184, 218; Criminal Policy

ghost novels, 170--1	Department, 143; Police Department,

Gilbert, Harriet, 158	166-8

Goad, Rosemary, 101	Hone, Edward, 5-7, 8

Goddard, Lord, 237	hospice movement, 223-4

Godwin, William, Caleb Williams, 17	House of Commons, 131, 167, 169

Goff, Martyn, 101	House of Lords, 130-2, 159,168-9, 170,
Gone With the Wind(£i\m), 156	209-10; hereditary peers in, 131-2

Goodmayes Hospital, Essex, 179-80	Housman, A. E., 25, 99

Gowen, James, 166	Howard, Elizabeth Jane, 186

Cowrie, Grey, 210	Hughes, Shirley, 66

Grafton, Sue, 129	Hughes, Ted, 153, 169, 189; Birthday Letters,
Grand Cayman, 132--4	153

Greene, Elaine, 13-14	Hurd, Douglas, 218

Greene, Graham, 19, 67, 79, 140, 194	Husak, Gustav, 120

Greene, Hugh Carleton, 13	Hussey, Duke, 218

Gregsten, Michael John, 208 and n.	Hyde Park, 157, 164, 178
Greig, Geordie, 101

Griffiths, Richard, 2r6	lies, Francis, 10

Guardian, The, 10	Illustrated London News, The, 9--10

INDEX	265


Importance of Being Earnest, The (film),	78, 79, 93-4, 97-101, 119, 124-7, '35-6,


13	H7-53. I9l> publishers of, 13-14, 58, 69,

Independent, The, 32	90-3, 98-9, 108, 119, 124, 147-53, 159-60,

Ingham, Bernard, 208	191; religion, 25-6, 30-1, 56-7, 84-90, 142,

Innocent Blood, 12, 106-8, 144; film rights,	173, 174-5, 177-8, 230, 232; sales, 68, 136,

108; publication, 107--8; themes, 106--7;	191, 199; as a teacher, 188--9; World War I

title, 98	and, 24, 154; World War II and, 41--3,

Institute of Education, 104	54, 121, 154--7, '94> 225--7; see also specific

International Women's Forum, Global	novels

Spring Conference of, 190	James, Sidney Victor, 4--9, 15, 20, 26, 30, 31,

Internet, 102, 149	36, 50-2, 53-5, 66-7, 84-7, 154, 155, 180;

IRA, 186	death, 231; marriage, 8-9, 50-2

Ireland, 169, 186-7	James, Walter, 7, 192

Isle of Man, 103-4	James (grandson of P. D. James), 116, 183,

Italy, 120	240

Jane (daughter of P. D. James), 10, 14, 36,

James, Dorothy May, 4-9, 15, 20, 24, 26, 30,	43, 49, 58, 92, 113, 157-8, 177-8, 182, 187,

54, 56, 84-9, 112, 154, 185; death, 231; mar-	224-7, 24°

riage, 8-9, 50-2; mental illness, 50-2, 180	Japan, 43, 194

James, Edward, 8, 28, 51-2, 52-3, 55, 56, 84,	John, Elton, 62

86, 87	Johnson, Samuel, 137--9

James, Henry, 39, 77; "The Friends of the	Johnson Society of London, 137--9

Friends," 172; The Golden Bowl, 38, 39;	Your se Leve, Le (film), 156

"Owen Wingrave," 172; The Sacred Fount,	Joyce, James, Ulysses, 118

39; "Sir Edmund Orme," 172; The Turn of	Judaism, 175

the Screw, 171-2; The Wings of the Dove, 39	juvenile courts, 159, 184-5, 19^~7

James, Padre Jimmy, 55

James, M. R., "Oh, Whistle, and I'll Come	Kark, Austen, 193

to You, My Lad," 170--1	Katie (granddaughter of P. D. James), 82, 83,

James, Monica, 8, 26, 51--2, 53, 56, 84, 86	240

James, P. D.: advice to aspiring writers, 189;	Katz, Roger, 94

birth, 4-5; book titles, 97-9, 201, 202; cats	Kemp, Peter, 77

of, 71-3, 203-6; childhood, 4-9, n, 12, 15,	Kennedy, Helena, 125

23-7, 44-9, 50-5, 56, 84-90, 125, 154, 180,	Kensington, 75, 157

185, 191, 218, 241; Civil Service career,	Kensington Gardens, 178

11-13, 106-8, 111-16 and n., 125, 143-4,	Kiefer, Anselm, 70-1

164, 165--6, 178, 184, 218; early writings,	Kilvert, Francis, ix

44; education, 9, 23-7, 28, 30-1, 44-9, 56,	King, Dr. Truby, 226

84, 125-6, 241; at Ely tax office, 36-7;	King James Bible, 26, 90, 142

fame, 20, 43-4, 68, 150; first novel, 9-14;	King's College Chapel, 88

first publication, 13-14, 44; forensic	King's Fund College for Hospital Adminis
research, 35, 104--5; as a Governor of the	tration, 13

BBC, 218-22; Health Service career, 11-13,	Kingston-on-Thames, 115

in-i6, 125-6, 220; life peerage, 130-2; lit-	Kipling, Rudyard, 99

erary influences, 79, 94-5, 97, 212, 229;	Knight, Edward, 227, 228, 229

literary style and methods, 12, 58-9, 61,	Knight, Mary, 228

74, 116--19, I39~41> 188--9, 199; literary	Knopf, Alfred A., 100, 147, 150, 153
themes, 12, 16, 35, 59, 67, 69--70, 106--7,

116-19, 141. H4; marriage of, 20, 113,	language, 75-6, 130, 136, 174, 189, rg2

179-82; mistaken for a man, 9-n; as a	Larkin, Philip, 80

mother, 43, 225-7, 240; press on, 9-11, 58,	Late Show, The, 94

59, 74, 78, 90, 92, 147-53, 170; publicity,	Laver, James, 129

266	INDEX


le Carre, John, 19, 140, 194; Tinker, Tailor,	McBain, Mrs., 111-12


Soldier, Spy, 121	McCrum, Robert, 68

Le Fanu, Mark, 68, 211	McDonald, Trevor, 102

Leith, Prue, 190	McEwan, Ian: A Child in Time, 103; EndurLewis,
Norman, 213-14	ing Love, 122

Librairie Artheme Fayard, 191	Mclntosh, Genista, 190

Lincoln College, Oxford, 75	McLennan, Joyce, 31, 43, 91, 94, 134, 142,

Lindisfarne Gospels, 188	147, 198

literary novel, 77--8; moral responsibility	McLintock, Bud, 176

and, 139-41	Meek, Margaret, 66

literary prizes, see specific prizes	menstruation, 45--6

Liturgical Commission, 142	mental illness, 50-2, 153, 170, 172, 179-82,

Lively, Jack, 106, 232	231-3; treatment of, 180-2

Lively, Penelope, 106, 232; Moon Tiger,	103 Meridian Television, 188

Lodge, David, 77	Meunier, Denise, 192

London, 22-3, 33, 35, 36, 41, 60-2, 66-7,	90, Miami, 151-2

94, 107, 179, 188, 206, 211; flooding,	235; Middle Temple Hall, 90--1

World War II, 156, 225-7	Millennium Dome, 162-3

London Skin Hospital, 111-13	Ministry of Food, 42, 43

Lottery grants, 96, 136, 177	Mitev, Marlene, 71

Lowe, Ellen, 173-4	Mitford, Nancy, 44, 50, 117

Ludford, 85	MonocledMutineer, The (TV programme),

Ludlow, 23-31, 53-4, 84-7, 218, 241	221

Lyn (son-in-law of P. D. James), 32, 56,	92, Monteith, Charles, 14, 80

115, 160--2, 240	Montreal, 127

moral responsibility of novelist, 139--41

MacCulloch, Diarmid, 142	More, Thomas, 234

Mackle, Joanna, 116, 136, 153, 169	Morrison, Blake, As If, 185

Macmillan, 212	Mortimer, John, 96-7, 203

Magna Carta, 188	Morton, Mandy, 41--2

Major, John, 61, 63--4, 239	Muir, Frank, 160

Major, Norma, 61, 63	Murder, She Wrote series, 124

male crime writers, 19, 32; see also specific	Murdoch, Iris, 231--3

writers	Murray, John, 169, 170

Malleson, Miles, 13	Myers, F. W. H., 175
Maloney, Michael, 160

Manvell, Francoise, 55-7	Naipaul, V. S., 101

Manvell, Roger, 55	National Front, 51

Marlborough, Duchess of, 187	National Portrait Gallery, 63-5, 162, 210;

Marr, Celia, 166, 167	portrait of P. D. James in, 64--5

Marr, Father Colin, 87-8	National School, 30-1, 84

Marr, Timothy, 166-8	National Science Museum, 162

Marsh, Ngaio, 12, 16, 33, 127, 128, 212	Neuberger, Rabbi Julia, 190

Marten, Maria, 95-6	New Scotland Yard, 35, 91

Martin, Oswald Norman, 197	New York, 100, 124, 149, 152-3

Mary (daughter-in-law of P. D. James),	82--3, New York Times, 99

101	Norman, Tom and Mary, 19--20, 21--2, no,

Massie, Allan, 102	191

Maul and the Pear Tree, The (with Tom	Northern Ireland, 169, 172, 186--7, 218

Critchley), 166--8	North West Metropolitan Regional Hospital

Maxwell-Fyfe, David, 237	Board, 114, 115, 181

INDEX	267


Norway, 69-71	poetry, 40, 153, 169-70


Notting Hill Housing Trust Limegrove	Port of London, 167, 233, 234

Appeal, 206-7	Prague, 119-21

"Not Proven" verdict, 184 and n.	Prayer Book Society, 142

Nottingham, 35	press, 92-3; on James, 9-11, 58, 59, 74, 78,
Nussey, Ellen, 117	90, 92, 147-53, 17°> see a^° specificpubliNygaard,
William, 71	cations

Princess Alice, sinking of, 236--7

O'Brien, E. D., 9-10	Pritchett, Sir Victor, 68

Ocean, Humphrey, 63	Promenade Concert, 66--7

Of Mice and Men (film), 156	Protestantism, 86, 98

O'Hara, John, Appointment in Samarra,	publicity, 78, 79, 93--4, 97--101, 119, 124--7,

97-8	135-6, 147-53. 191: tours. H7-53

Oldham Evening Chronicle & Standard, 10	public library system, 60

Olivier, Laurence, 156	publishing, 147--9, 189; author tours, 147--53;
Ollard, Richard, 213	James and, 13-14, 58, 69, 90-3, 98-9, 108,

Original Sin, 64, 98, 104, 235; research for,	119, 124, 147-53, 159-60, 191; shoddy book

235-6	production, 207; see also specific publishers

Orwell, George, 17	Puttnam, David, 208

Oslo, 69	Pym, Barbara, 80, 140
Owen, Wilfred, 154

Oxford, 4-9, 23, 39-40, 84, 187, 192	QE2 (ship), 122-4

Oxford Dictionary of Literary Quotations, 77,	Queen Charlotte's Hospital, 225--6

98

Oxford University Press, 77, 159	radio, 80, 101, 126, 127, 149, 150, 221, 222

Oxley, Eliza, 109	Ralegh, Walter, no

Ratcliffe Highway Murders, 166-8

Paddington Hospital Management Commit-	Raven, Daniel, 106-7

tee, n, 111--14	Raymond, Ernest, 94--5; Tell England, 94--5;
Page, Vera, 105	We the Accused, 95

Palin, Michael, 211	Reed, Carol, 156

Paretsky, Sara, 129	Regent's Park, 178

Paris, 55, 191-2	Reichs, Kathy, 129; Deja Dead, 127

Parker, Derek, 59-60	religion, 25-6, 30-1, 56-7, 84-90, 135-6, 142,
Parliament, 130-2, 144, 159, 165, 168-9, I7°>	T73> J74-5> 177~%> 23°. 232

209-10; reform, 131-2	Rendell, Ruth, 16, 58-9, 193, 206-7; Road
Patterson, Denise, 193	Rage, 58

Pattinson, Sir Derek, 174	reviewers, book, 93

Pears, Iain, An Instance of the Fingerpost, 122	Reynolds, Dr. Barbara, 79-82; The Letters of
Penguin, 119	Dorothy L. Sayers, 79-81

Pepys, Samuel, ix, 213	Roche, Alixe Buckerfield de la, 39-40, 49,
Peter (son-in-law of P. D. James), 49, 58, 59,	203-6

83, 92, 157-8, 187, 240	Rosenberg, Isaac, 154

Peto, Sir Morton, 21	Ross, Louise, 227, 229

photography, 74	Rouse, Alfred Arthur, 105

Pilling, Ann, 66-7	Roy, Arundhati, The God of Small Things,
Plowman, Piers, History of England, 25	101

Poe, Edgar Allan, 18; The Gold Bug, 18; The	Royal Army Medical Corps, 43

Murders in the Rue Morgue, 18; The Mys-	Royal College of Art, 66

tery of Marie Roget, 18; The Purloined Let-	Royal Court Theatre, 96

ter, 18; Thou Art the Man, 18	Royal Garden Party, 2,24

268	INDEX


Royal Geographic Society, 206--7	Smith, Joan, 129


Royal Naval College, 235	Smith, John Saumarez, 213

RoyalNore (ship), 233-4	Smith, Madeleine, 184

Royal Opera House, 162	Smith (W. H.) Literary Award, 169

Royal Society, 67-8, 135	Snow, C. P., 117

Royal Society of Literature, 96-7	Society of Authors, 59-60, 67-8, 211; Annual

Rubens, Peter Paul, 176	General Meeting, 67-8; awards ceremony,

Runcie, Archbishop Robert, 142	211-12

Rushdie, Salman, 71, 101, Midnight's Chil-	Somerleyton, 21

dren, 71; The Satanic Verses, 71	Southwold, 15, 16, 54, 55, 56, 66, 83, 160,
Russell, John, no	203-6

Russia, 121	Southwold Archaeological and Natural His
Rust, Percy Orlando, 105	tory Society, 15, 16

Spain, 120

Sackville-West, Vita, All Passion Spent, 97	Spark, Muriel, The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie,
St. Edward's Church, Cambridge, 87-8	44

St. German's Cathedral, Isle of Man, 103,	Spectator, 98

104	Spencer, Earl, 62-3

St. Hilda's College, 39	Spillett, Percy, 7

St. James Palace, 62	Stagecoach (film), 156

St. James's Park, 178	Steen, Captain Peter, 234

Sassoon, Siegfried, 154	Stephen, Thoby, 38, 39

Sayers, Dorothy, 12, 16, 33--4, 79--82, 127,	Stern, G. B., More Talk of Jane Austen, 259

128, 129, 158--9, 212; Busman's Honeymoon,	Stockton, 216--17

33--4, 128; Gaudy Night, 158, 243; The Man Stoppard, Tom, 215

Born to be King, 80; Murder Must Adver-	Storie, Valerie, 208 and n.

tise, 59; Thrones, Dominations, 158-9, 196	Stothard, Peter, 104

schizophrenia, 180, 181, 182	Strachey, Lytton, 38

Schrnitov (lawyer), 114	Street, Margaret, 66

Scotland, 168--9, 182--5, 218; criminal law,	Suffolk, 15--16

183-5	Sunday Times, 76-7, 101, 233; Hay Festival,
Scotland Yard, 17, 35, 91	195-9

Scottish Medico-Legal Society, 178, 182, 183	Surrey Comet, 10

Scribner's, 98	Suzman, Janet, 190

Searle, Ronald, 46	Symons, Baroness, 191

Sereny, Gitta, Cries Unheard,i<)6	Symons, Julian, 17
sex, 45-6, in, 149; abuse, 29; in college,

38-9; pornography, 68	Talkers Circuit, 86

Shakespeare, William, 138, 142	Taste for Death, A, 35, 59, 107; television
Shaw, Sir Brian, 233, 235	adaptation, 203; themes, 141; title, 98-9

Sherlock Holmes Society, 32	Tate Gallery, 157-8

Shine, Diana, 211	Taylor, Michael, 64--5

Short, Clare, 101	Teaching and Higher Education Bill, 168-9,
Simenon, Georges, 213	170

Simmons, Posy, 66	television, 68--9, 94, 126, 127, 128, 149, 150,
Simpson, Wallis, 60	160, 176, 220-1; adaptations of James's

Sinn Fein, 186	novels, 68--9, 119, 161, 200--203, 224;

Slack, Andy, 74	BBC, 218-22; contractual dos and don'ts,

Sleight, Elizabeth, 106	202--3; Cordelia Gray series, 200--203;

Smith, Dr. Charles Saumarez, 64	"Writing a Novel" programme, 188-9; see

Smith, Chris, 188	also specific programmes

INDEX	269


Texas, 149-51	Vanbrugh, John, 187


Tey, Josephine, 12	Vanity Fair, 150

Thames Barrier, 234-5	Vaughan, Tim, 119

Thames River, 234-6

This Happy Breed (film), 156	Wales, 195, 218

Thompson, Edith, 237-8	walking, 30

Thompson, John B., 102	Wallace, William Herbert, 239

Thompson, Percy, 238	Wallace Collection, 177

Thorogood, Julie, 129	Walsh, Jill Paton, Thrones, Dominations,

Thorpeness, 21--2	158--9, 196

Times, 58, 74, 104, 115, 231	Ward, Graham, 176

Titanic (film), 152	Waugh, Evelyn, ix, 79, 118; BridesbeadRevis

Titian, 177	ited, 203; A Handful of Dust, 97

titles, book, 97-9, 201, 202	Way Ahead, The (film), 156

Toksvig, Sandi, 160	Whicher, Jonathan, 17

Tokyo, 194	Whitbread Literary Awards, 168, 169,

Tolpuddle Martyrs, 190	176-7

Tolstoy, Leo, War and Peace, 77	White, William, 80--2

Tom (grandson of P. D. James), 82-3, 101,	White Hall, 42-3, 224, 226

240	Whitehorn, Katharine, 190

Tomalin, Claire, jane Austen: A Life, 122	Williams, John, 168

Toronto, 124-6	Wilson, A. N., 96

Trask, Betty, 211-12	Winchester, 7-8

Trades Union Council, 60	Winfield House, 63

Trask (Betty) Award, 211-12	Winslett, Kate, 152

Trenchard, John, no	Winter, Nicola, 93

Trinity College, 38-9, 154, 222; Richard	Wizard of Oz, The (film), 156

Hillary Memorial Lecture, 191, 192-3;	Wodehouse, P. G., 50, 140

"Sexing the Liturgy" conference, 174-6	Wolfeton, 109-10

Trollope, Anthony, 37--88, 77, 139, 223; The	Women's League of Health and Beauty, 51

Duke's Children, 223; The Small House at	Wonnacott, John, 63

Allington, 37, 38; The Way We Live Now,	Wood, Sir Henry, 67

77	'	Woodlands, The, 85, 86, 218

Trooping the Colour, 209--10	Woolf, Leonard, 37--9; Sowing, 37, 38

tuberculosis, 114-15	Woolf, Virginia, ix, 16, 38, 39, 100, 140

Tumbledown (TV programme), 221	Wooster, Bertie, 141

Turner, J. M. W, 158	Wordsworth, William, "Daffodils," 170

Tyndale, William, 142	World War I, 7, 8, n, 24, 54, 154, 155

World War II, 42, 55, 56, 79, 121, 154-7, 194,
Uglow, Jenny, Hogarth: a Life and a World,	204, 225-7; food rations, 41-3; V-i and

122	V-2 bombardment, 225-7

United Film and Television Productions, 119,	Wright, Mr. Justice, 239

200, 201	"Writing a Novel" programme, 188--9
University of California at Irvine, 189

University Women's Club, 58	Yonge, Charlotte M., The Trial, 222-3

Unsuitable Job for a Woman, An, 40, 98, 201,	Young, Ric, 126

2-°2	Young, Rosamond, 147, 150

Ustinov, Peter, 216	Young, Stuart, 221


A NOTE ABOUT THE AUTHOR


P. D. james is the author of fifteen previous books, many of
which have been filmed and broadcast on television in the
United States and other countries. She spent thirty years in various
departments of the British Civil Service, including the
Police and Criminal Law Departments of the Home Office.
She has served as a magistrate and as a governor of the BBC.
The recipient of many prizes and honors, she was created
Baroness James of Holland Park in 1991. She lives in London
and Oxford.

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