Jennifer Byrne Presents PD James

you hello and welcome our guest tonight has been writing novels for over half a century and few writers have made their mark on a genre quite like PD James the queen of the detective novel began publishing in 1962 with cover her face featuring everybody's favorite detective and poet Adam Dalgleish she's written some 14 de leche novel sins ventured down a dystopian side road with the children of men and most recently embroiled the characters from Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice in a shocking tale of murder and mayhem in Death Comes to Pemberley Baroness of Holland Park PD James thank you so much for joining us well it's lovely to be here it really is Jennifer why don't we start with Death Comes to Pemberley because I got the impression you had enormous amount of fun writing that book I did I did I loved writing it and what happened really was I'd written the last detective stories a private patient it's a long book as you'll know and I felt you know that my 92nd birthday coming would I be able to sustain a very long one and I got this idea at the back of my mind I'd had it there for a long time it should be wonderful to combine my two great enthusiasms in life for writing detective fiction and for Jane Austen so that's what I said him to do with it and it was it was the greatest fun to write it really was did you have no compunction Phyllis about introducing the sordid world of murder into the happy happy life of Pemberley well no but really did because I'm always to be that I was introducing a horrid art of murder into all sorts of quite comfortable households and organizations with a you know just changing scores or forensic science laboratories or whatever when I get to something awful happens and there were no shame oh nana told em no I'm kinda shameless about that but I think what's so important in the detective story is contrast and here we do have the contrast between Pemberley which represents beauty and order and hierarchy and security and jobs for people who are happy working there and a happy marriage and children and the future or so and then the wild wood outside which and where there's a scene isn't there when they're having dinner and the Bingleys away afterwards while they're having music Elizabeth just thinks to herself that here they are sitting in the most civilized country in Europe with all its art and its literature and it's beautiful furniture around them and somehow they are there is a world outside which is just as violent as the animal world but they're protected against it and how long can they be protected by wealth as position and comfort from this other world and then the other world do the pictures do you think generally that murders the form of a murder the motive for murders reflect a change over history I think so I think so but presumably probably the motives are much the same as they've always been and I suppose anger jealousy lust from money and often to save somebody else to get rid of somebody who may be going to do damage to someone you love all sorts of motives but I suppose the sort of anger and jealousy especially sexual jealousy is no doubt how many murders we read in our papers you know our boyfriends will be thrown over somebody else husbands who find their wives are unfaithful so you're saying these things are you eith always there haven't we they've always been there there's less excuse now to me for money though people are rich and much less you see they think some of the most interesting cases and other Victorian ones where women have murdered husbands usually with hostak yes and because of its already terrible we know but does your laughing that was the deal well I'm laughing because I'm just so sick you yeah my husband I wouldn't have been suspicious by solo they were flat papers and you hit a button no they were in a situation before the law was changed when they married their money went to their husbands and if their husband was cruel or sadistic or had very unpleasant sexual habits we couldn't get rid of him if they had to find cruelty as well as infidelity whereas he could get rid of a wife very easily so there was no a new equality and your money just went so you what part is you have so I think they often felt you know just causing it but I don't know why I'm laughing was a terrible well I'm laughing because people have said this to me there's something so incongruous about this elegant 92 year old in your like jackass talking about ghastly methods of murder well I know and it certainly isn't right but there's a very interesting cases because there again whether you get the contrast between their crowded drawing rooms the respectability of their lives you know upper tutorials were and underneath these see these passions which result of them actually committing murder it's quite extraordinary your life span is great you were born two years after World War one you were nine when the Great Depression came nineteen when world war ii came and how not be your books how have these changes affected you Oh I think they've affected everyone immensely and particularly I think them women but first of all because there are the scientific changes all sorts of illnesses was killed when I was a child have now been conquered all sorts of extraordinary things can be done which we wouldn't have been told I mean I if people had told me when I was a girl that man would make him rocket that who'd go to the moon I think I would have thought that was possible because I would think get him rocket is strong enough and powerful enough and enough science behind it yes I can see eventually we could possibly do that but if they said in your lifetime doctors will be able to take a dead heart from a dead body transfer it plus hundreds of miles and put it into a living body and set it beating again I would never believe that I would have thought dead heart and the dead body is dead you can't set it beating India and that still does seem to me a most extraordinary thing to be able to do does it sometimes make you almost dizzy to remember that multitude who changed its Jeffie it was entirely a different world my childhood was much closer to the Victorian world then then the Victorian child would be to the world today or my generation is to the world today and it this largely scientific I mean and it changed drastically for all of us of course with the invention of the atomic bomb it made war much more terrifying and horrible do you remember when the atomic bomb went off very little but I can remember I was my husband was overseas he was in the role Army Medical Corps and I had two small girls and it was breakfast time when I was listening to the the news coming on the BBC and I can really actually remember I was feeding my baby in the mirror chair which was really should - those feeding her spoon-feeding and this voice came on and I can remember the mixture in the voice of all and triumph and horror and he said we have dropped on the enemy the power of the Sun itself and I just use the world had changed forever let's talk a bit about that time you your husband of course came back from the war and your mother had been mentally ill and and was incarcerated when you were still in your teens I believe your husband was mentally ill how difficult were those early days when you well I I think they were very difficult in many ways but of course my mother's mental illness nowadays would have been treated with pills as sort of menopausal upset it would hardly count you know but then of course there were of the pills available life was very difficult and the the psychiatric hospitals were not good places to be in really and yes it was difficult and my husband's illness was difficult but I remember him with great love and so did his children do you still think of him often oh yes yes I do especially when things happen that he would have enjoyed you know and which we would have shared yes I think if you love someone you don't do don't forget that really so very early you did you plan to did you dream of becoming a writer oh yes from very very early childhood I knew that I wanted to write I don't think I ever doubted I could do it to some of my friends that were talking about it say you know I wonder if I could do it and I thought I might be able to do it from the night so wonder why I I always thought I could do it I don't mean I was conceited about that but it it I I think that's so with people how good musicians they never sort of they decide that they think they might be able to play the piano they just go to the Amazon very faith and Pete and my friends who are artists you just you know I've seen them with the committee sometimes and immediately they're drawing the people around the table on the back of their agenda because they draw and and I just felt that I was a writer but I was a very late beginner because of the war and my husband's illness and the children and they did come a moment when I realized and it was rather like a revelation and a very worrying one that you know life was just passing me by and that unless I got down to it and got that first book written I I might not ever be a writer because you wanted so much to write and you couldn't as you said you had to work you had to support the children because of your husband's illness did you feel very frustrated during those years well I do I do remember being frustrated I think the reason was that I was working I was a working mom and we lived with my parents in law so I did have a very safe and loving home for the children and the job took a lot of energy and I felt that I wanted to get promotion so that I took exams and I was in the hospital that the National Health Service when it was very new and I took the exams in hospital administration and became the federal that I don't know what had worked I got a I got a diploma little bit and therefore you know I competed for promotion and got promotion and got quite a lot of promotion so all that took a lot of energy with that desire for promotion wanting to be really good or simply wanting to get more money to support the physic both I think yes I think I was quite ambitious if I had to work I wanted to get on I wanted to be well-regarded I want to have a more interesting job a more Philly Joe but I also wanted more money because I wanted to have some independence be able to support children to ask an obvious question with a mentally sick husband working yourself did you never think of going your own way of saying well I'm sorry that didn't work I'm just going to look out for myself now no no I didn't people didn't at the time all you did I think how did once but I knew I wasn't going to do it yeah I thought that my husband was a loving father and he was loved by his children and it will be much better for them to know that that I was always with him and it would be a lesson I didn't want them to feel that things got bad you could always get out of her they were listen to the girls in a way well it was an example for the girls I saw us about what what I felt about marriage you know and the obligations of marriage I suppose it was a lesson I didn't want to give them until they saw that well if things go wrong there's always a way out but of course nowadays there is always a way out and it's very very common bit Davis I think it was who famously said aging is not for sissies is she right well I said by I aspire loud she's right some people at 80 are absolutely amazing I gave rather tired of people being told people are 90 just back from climbing Everest you have attractive thing it makes live alien air to go and no it's not for wimps it's not for wimps because the body does begin to tell you that is not designed to last forever and I've so loved walking it's been one of my great pleasures and just to lose that capacity to sort of just think accountant just a bust after the West End and have a good ol fat around all the shops and see what's coming in or go to a museum you know just by walking myself there or going by the sea and walking by the sea which I loved but I think you in extreme old age you just have to be grateful for what you could enjoy and not moan about what you can't enjoy just be thinking of the past and how good that those strings were when you did have them and how good the things all that you've still got you can still got your eyes and you've still got your hearing what is your greatest joy now I think just being with my daughter's probably a quiet over each weekend like go down to Oxford when I have a flat and I have lunch with my younger daughter Jane and her husband and sometimes see my children grandchildren great retro and usually Peter who's a very good cook cooks the lunch and then we play Scrabble in the garden do you win no I won last time that's very very rare he's brilliant at it when your first book was published it was obviously past what they call the Golden Age of crime fiction by assume you grew up reading those grace authors land - and Dorothea sayers but mostly Dorothea says and Margery Ellingham living I wasn't a great admirer of Agatha Christie but of course I read on rising ground everybody read her we already purchased Easley factory she was our sole owned by the Bible you should express it strongly but and she was extremely genius although I think as a writer and I wouldn't read her very high but all the same her dialogue was very good and she gave pleasure and relief and entertainment to millions of people in very bad times of war and depression as well as good times and that's a huge achievement is so I was never decribe at is that what the so-called Golden Age was about was actually distraction from the difficulty of everyday life it's reassuring in an old way but but it suggests you know if you live it it's always been very popular in difficult times times of war or times a little normal kind of certainty under stress and I think it says that at that the detective story has at its heart a problem and if you live in an age when your problems can really save insoluble problems to youth ever views crime if you like the problems of poverty the problems of our inner city ends conceiving absolutely insoluble no matter how much money or how many social workers or how much goodwill you put it there not sold here you have perform literature with a terrible puzzled result and it is solved by the end of the book is solved and not by good luck or by sort of some kind of supernatural agency it's solved by human beings by intelligence and courage and perseverance tell me about Dalgleish the delicious intelligent Adam Dalgleish was it always intended that all your readers should fall in love with him well I hope they were solid proof of bibble like them certainly and he had a greater of it I mean I intended him to have a certain effect because I thought are given the characters I admire in a man but also in a woman of high intelligence and compassion but not sentimentality sensitivity courage and reticence and I think it's because he is so reticent and he's not easy to know that women see him as a bit of a challenge I said I would certainly not have been averse to marrying him had I met him in the flesh so naturally you created him as a widower so the opportunity was always there absolutely uh was he based on anyone you knew was he based in fact partly or yourself no he wasn't based on anyone at all not yourself no he's based on me I think and that's the sort of person I would like to be I thought of better given the qualities I admire but I also thought that he he would have some kind of artistic interest and looking at him I feel that most likely he'd be a musician probably a violinist or pianist but I don't know enough about music to make that credible I think it's tremendously important to write about what you know and I I do love poetry and I think I understand through poetry impulse I think I can understand how a poem begins so I made him a purse and I think this one I cheated a bit because I thought it must have one book with some poetry in it and like the ended it was in the one said in them a Theological College dated in holy ordered this in holy orders but you see I cheated a bit because this poem was one he wrote when he was an adolescent so it's a very good program a lesson to have written but I don't have to help people and I remember my that I think it was the members of staff here one of the directors Charles Monteith who more or less accepted me on their list and he was a great friend of WH Auden and he sent him let's get will ask wisdom to write some Persian word down gleesh well unfortunately old and died and he didn't do this well maybe he wouldn't have done it anyway but he might have thought it was a joke and I was very sorry he didn't because I thought you know if he wrote a perfect out he shall put it in the next book give me man if he didn't and I think but he would have been a bit of fun and then the critics would have said probably how unwise of PD James to attempt to write verse for denigration either said shucks for you that's all it would have been a great joke but however I have to write to prove myself you you said just before my last outing and and in the private patient he does talk about being tired of murder I think maybe I've had enough of murder is that definite 100% that is your last uglies book you have hung up his shingle well unfortunately has happened so I don't quite know why I say unfortunately I have got an idea for one that would probably be less complex but Isabel Ruiz won but I'm I'm so anxious to keep up the standard and I think so many very popular writers have gone on publishing long after he should have stopped and just certainly Agatha Christie was wrong mark I'm not sure Lamar Allen but Dyer Marsh walls and it's such a pity and I I would hate absolutely hate to think that the critics were saying considering this book was written when she was 95 it is a remarkable achievement but hardly vintage PD James I wouldn't block that actually so having sort of signed him off with private patient you're saying that there is another idea there is another idea yes there is another idea this is excellently yes there might only be one now that might be to majus my children always say I've got too many were just this one is not enough other is the intervener book where you have not had multiple murders I think the first time I already had one and then it's been multiples all the way that we must assume say F absolutely do you enjoy do you actually enjoy the process of sitting down and writing well I think when things are going well it's absolutely marvelous and this I feel it's a huge privilege to be a writer I really do I think I'm incredibly lucky to have been given a talent and also the health to pursue it but it is some it is hard work very often and I think that even war who is among the writers I most admire and I remember his letters that he wrote to Nancy Mitford and he was always saying no it's not good enough we've got to do it again this doesn't work do it again there's a real novel somewhere here or a certain whisker but it's not right yet it's not a work of art yet sometimes he gave advice which he didn't take and I think she was quite right not today because they were very different writers he wasn't very sound in my view on advising her back plot but he was sound on them on the quality of the writing and making sure it is the very best you can do and not being slovenly and and that is sometimes quite hard work when it's not going so well but the fact that you're saying you are thinking of writing again another Dalgleish means you obviously feel you're capable of and will be able to complete it and when's it coming out well I would like to start it but um I'll wait and see the next medical report on me and see what they say and you know whether I need couple of clear yes and I won't appear it was really good and you want to feel I assume that you'd be around finishes yes I'd like to be around you sir produced and who knows I'm I might suddenly get a great person use where that was 95 of the Dutch after Australia again well that is one of the the sad possibilities you were saying that you may not on current planning ever return to Australia no I don't see so I've had to deep vein thrombosis and they don't like you flying don't distances my dragon walk walk come down the plane number but clearly wait and I've loved the journeys I've had I've had some wonderfully happy times in Australia is there anything given that you may not come again wonderful if you do if you don't come again do you have anything you'd like to say to Australian readers anything I would like say well I would like saying a big thank you to all my Australian readers because I know they're wonderfully loyal when enthusiastic they enjoy the book so much so they say so I know that from the simple soap opera anything else but when I've met them I've known that and I'd like to say to you thank you very much for having me are no programme I've enjoyed just Mississippi pity James all I can say is thank you so much for being gentle with me today I've enjoyed his rectum heart and I hope we shall see you again in Australia Wendy and I hope all will go really well with you in every possible way private life and professional life and everything thank you so much and that is our program for tonight the excellent PD James I hope you'll be able to join me next week when I'll be speaking to Ian Rankin about his life of crime and the return of realist notice until then very happy reading goodnight you

Channel: Oswaldo Armendariz

Views: 15,927

Rating: 4.8540144 out of 5

Keywords: Book, ABC Television (Organization)

Id: HbEji2HOC1Y

Length: 27min 42sec (1662 seconds)

Published: Sat Apr 19 2014