OK, so here's a sudden, yet urgent change of subject. I am having dinner tonight with George Clooney. It's not just me and him, I hasten to add -- there will be several dozen others. But nevertheless, I shall be in the mighty presence of Gorgeous George Himself. The prospect is somewhat discombobulating. I have been a fan since he played Dr Ross in ER -- over a decade ago -- and I'm beginning to feel nervous about tonight, because of course, George will have no interest whatsoever in saying hello to me, and this may ruin my long-lasting, though entirely one-sided, relationship with him. Perhaps screen idols should remain celluloid, rather than being made flesh?
Also, although George and I are about the same age, meeting him is guaranteed to make me feel ancient.
But I can't NOT go, can I?
Am off to brush my teeth, put on my heels, etc etc. Will report back later.
Monday, 7 April 2008
Sunday, 6 April 2008
Hampstead Waterstones: free book, from me to you...
I'm going to be talking about 'Daphne' at Hampstead Waterstones on Tuesday at 7pm. I'll also have a copy of the novel with me, and the first person to comment here, who can come along to Hampstead on Tuesday, will be presented with said book afterwards: signed, sealed, delivered, it's yours.
Saturday, 5 April 2008
Menabilly reading
Whenever I do an event at a bookshop or literary festival, and people ask about Menabilly, Daphne du Maurier's house in Cornwall, I am reminded how powerful a pull it still exerts: perhaps because it is so entirely hidden from view, and closed to visitors: or as du Maurier herself described it, "the house of secrets". But you can read about it in the following books, all of which open doors into Menabilly.
1. Rebecca: obvious, I know, but Manderley was inspired by Menabilly, and its descriptions of the estate are not only evocative, but geographically accurate.
2. My Cousin Rachel: another of Du Maurier's novels set in Menabilly, and just as atmospheric as Rebecca.
3. The King's General: du Maurier's fictionalised account of Menabilly's role in the English Civil War. She was partly inspired to write the story after discovering that a skeleton -- allegedly of a young Cavalier -- had been found walled up in the buttresses of Menabilly by a previous owner.
4. A Daughter's Memoir by Flavia Leng: a compellingly written account of a Menabilly childhood by du Maurier's younger daughter, which provides a rather less romanticised version of their life there. (For example, she writes that her older sister, Tessa, was deeply unhappy: "She says three things stand out in her mind about her childhood at Mena: the cold, the hunger and the wretched rats; and I suppose you could add loneliness.")
5. "Letters from Menabilly": a volume of correspondence between Daphne du Maurier and her friend, Oriel Malet. It's filled with wonderful vignettes and insight, and I find myself re-reading it over and over again.
1. Rebecca: obvious, I know, but Manderley was inspired by Menabilly, and its descriptions of the estate are not only evocative, but geographically accurate.
2. My Cousin Rachel: another of Du Maurier's novels set in Menabilly, and just as atmospheric as Rebecca.
3. The King's General: du Maurier's fictionalised account of Menabilly's role in the English Civil War. She was partly inspired to write the story after discovering that a skeleton -- allegedly of a young Cavalier -- had been found walled up in the buttresses of Menabilly by a previous owner.
4. A Daughter's Memoir by Flavia Leng: a compellingly written account of a Menabilly childhood by du Maurier's younger daughter, which provides a rather less romanticised version of their life there. (For example, she writes that her older sister, Tessa, was deeply unhappy: "She says three things stand out in her mind about her childhood at Mena: the cold, the hunger and the wretched rats; and I suppose you could add loneliness.")
5. "Letters from Menabilly": a volume of correspondence between Daphne du Maurier and her friend, Oriel Malet. It's filled with wonderful vignettes and insight, and I find myself re-reading it over and over again.
Friday, 4 April 2008
Home again.
All went well in Oxford yesterday, though I've been stricken with a horrible virus today, and am writing this with a streaming nose and feverish head (just as well that this virus can't be spread via the computer). Anyway, it was a beautiful spring afternoon when I arrived in Oxford, and I went for a wander around Jericho, where I lived as a child. Standing in front of our old house, on Richmond Road, I was so overcome with nostalgia that I found myself gazing in through the window, on the verge of tears. Fortunately, the very amenable owner didn't take offense, and asked me in for a cup of tea after I told her that I'd grown up in the house. It was all just as I remembered it -- my little bedroom on the top floor, overlooking the garden with its apple and pear trees. Even the miniature box hedges were still there, which edged my mother's herb garden.
By the time I got to Christ Church to do my event in the evening, I'd fallen in love with Oxford all over again -- the twilight gathering in the meadows behind the college, the bells ringing out from the tower. It's such a seductive place.
Anyway, my event sold out -- hurrah! -- and it was such a lovely audience, including some midwives who had come all the way from Glasgow, and who bought three copies of 'Daphne' each, and could quote lines from Branwell Bronte's poetry. ('Why dost thou sorrow for the happy dead?') If any of them happen to read this -- thank you so much for being there!
Actually, I wanted to say thank you to everyone in the audience, because they asked such good questions, and were real enthusiasts. Also, one of my former teachers from junior school came -- and afterwards she told me that Philip Pullman taught at my old school; but not me, sadly (I think I must be too old to have been one of his pupils, given that I was born in 1961).
Must stop rambling, and go and cook fish for hungry teenage sons. No dreaming spires in view from north London, but the magnolia tree is blooming in the back garden, and the wisteria is budding, and the blackbird is singing at dusk.
By the time I got to Christ Church to do my event in the evening, I'd fallen in love with Oxford all over again -- the twilight gathering in the meadows behind the college, the bells ringing out from the tower. It's such a seductive place.
Anyway, my event sold out -- hurrah! -- and it was such a lovely audience, including some midwives who had come all the way from Glasgow, and who bought three copies of 'Daphne' each, and could quote lines from Branwell Bronte's poetry. ('Why dost thou sorrow for the happy dead?') If any of them happen to read this -- thank you so much for being there!
Actually, I wanted to say thank you to everyone in the audience, because they asked such good questions, and were real enthusiasts. Also, one of my former teachers from junior school came -- and afterwards she told me that Philip Pullman taught at my old school; but not me, sadly (I think I must be too old to have been one of his pupils, given that I was born in 1961).
Must stop rambling, and go and cook fish for hungry teenage sons. No dreaming spires in view from north London, but the magnolia tree is blooming in the back garden, and the wisteria is budding, and the blackbird is singing at dusk.
Thursday, 3 April 2008
Oxford Literary Festival
I'm just gathering myself together before setting off to speak at the Sunday Times Oxford Literary Festival today. I lived in Oxford for a while as a child -- my father was an academic there -- and there's something about going back to the places where one grew up... I have this fantasy that I'll get there, and it will all be the same as it was; I'll turn a corner, and see myself and my sister as little girls, playing hopscotch on the pavement outside our house in Jericho.
It's so vivid in my memory today -- cycling to school up the Woodstock Road; the cherry blossom in Summertown; the ducks on the lake in Worcester College gardens.
Anyway, looking forward to meeting some of you later today, I hope. I'll be the woman with the nostalgic smile on my face...
It's so vivid in my memory today -- cycling to school up the Woodstock Road; the cherry blossom in Summertown; the ducks on the lake in Worcester College gardens.
Anyway, looking forward to meeting some of you later today, I hope. I'll be the woman with the nostalgic smile on my face...
Wednesday, 2 April 2008
Daphne and Hampstead
Such is my technical incompetence that I can't link to a piece about "Daphne" in the new Time Out -- which is annoying, because it's extremely informative about the du Mauriers and Hampstead (and nice about my novel, too, for which I am hugely grateful). Anyway, it's by John O'Connell, and I'll copy a bit out here, in case anyone would like to visit the places in London where the du Mauriers lived:
"Most people, quite properly, associate Daphne du Maurier with Cornwall -- specifically Menabilly, the country mansion which she rented for more than 20 years and which became Manderley in her most famous novel, 'Rebecca'. But Daphne was a Londoner in self-imposed exile. She was born in 1907 at 24 Cumberland Terrace in Regent's Park, and lived for most of her childhood in Hampstead at Cannon Hall, the early Georgian mansion bought in 1916 by her father, actor-manager Gerald du Maurier, in an attempt to reclaim the area he'd known as a child: he was born a short walk away at 27 Church Row. Gerald's father was George du Maurier, the writer and Punch cartoonist whose hugely successful 1894 novel 'Trilby' gave us the term 'svengali'.
Daphne was a shy, tomboyish child, not always at ease in the flamboyantly theatrical du Maurier household. She was obsessed to an unnatural degree by her father (her books teem with incest fantasies) but lacked her sisters' closeness to her mother, an actress Gerald met when she was cast opposite him in a production of J.M Barrie's 'The Admirable Crichton'. Instead, she formed close attachments to Cannon Hall's servants, especially her governess, Maud Waddell, or 'Tod'.
Daphne du Maurier is the heroine of Justine Picardie's new novel, 'Daphne', which is why she and I are standing outside Cannon Hall and squinting through the wrought iron gate at the stable block, with its attic windows and tiny clock tower, and the smart cars parked along the drive. Inevitably, someone in the city owns it now."
There's loads more -- and I'm going to send it as a scan to my friends at the BronteBlog and Dovegreyreader, in case they know how to post it. But if they don't, I'll copy out the relevant bits later -- about the graveyard in Hampstead and so on...
Incidentally, Daphne's governess from childhood, Tod, came to live with her at Menabilly, and was very much part of the household -- a kind of governness cum housekeeper. Daphne's husband, Tommy Browning, didn't like her at all, and referred to her as Mrs Danvers. I'll leave you to draw your own conclusions on that... and of course, I'd like to hear what you think, as always.
"Most people, quite properly, associate Daphne du Maurier with Cornwall -- specifically Menabilly, the country mansion which she rented for more than 20 years and which became Manderley in her most famous novel, 'Rebecca'. But Daphne was a Londoner in self-imposed exile. She was born in 1907 at 24 Cumberland Terrace in Regent's Park, and lived for most of her childhood in Hampstead at Cannon Hall, the early Georgian mansion bought in 1916 by her father, actor-manager Gerald du Maurier, in an attempt to reclaim the area he'd known as a child: he was born a short walk away at 27 Church Row. Gerald's father was George du Maurier, the writer and Punch cartoonist whose hugely successful 1894 novel 'Trilby' gave us the term 'svengali'.
Daphne was a shy, tomboyish child, not always at ease in the flamboyantly theatrical du Maurier household. She was obsessed to an unnatural degree by her father (her books teem with incest fantasies) but lacked her sisters' closeness to her mother, an actress Gerald met when she was cast opposite him in a production of J.M Barrie's 'The Admirable Crichton'. Instead, she formed close attachments to Cannon Hall's servants, especially her governess, Maud Waddell, or 'Tod'.
Daphne du Maurier is the heroine of Justine Picardie's new novel, 'Daphne', which is why she and I are standing outside Cannon Hall and squinting through the wrought iron gate at the stable block, with its attic windows and tiny clock tower, and the smart cars parked along the drive. Inevitably, someone in the city owns it now."
There's loads more -- and I'm going to send it as a scan to my friends at the BronteBlog and Dovegreyreader, in case they know how to post it. But if they don't, I'll copy out the relevant bits later -- about the graveyard in Hampstead and so on...
Incidentally, Daphne's governess from childhood, Tod, came to live with her at Menabilly, and was very much part of the household -- a kind of governness cum housekeeper. Daphne's husband, Tommy Browning, didn't like her at all, and referred to her as Mrs Danvers. I'll leave you to draw your own conclusions on that... and of course, I'd like to hear what you think, as always.
Tuesday, 1 April 2008
The Du Mauriers and J.M Barrie
I see dovegreyreader has come up with a good reading trail for "Daphne" -- so I thought I might add a bit more information to the background of the book, over here. One of the strands to the story that I found most fascinating -- and utterly consuming, during the research -- was the relationship between the Du Maurier family and J.M Barrie.
Barrie was the author of Peter Pan, and a huge quantity of other plays and novels. His writing was inspired by, and threaded through, the Du Maurier family, to quite an extraordinary degree. Daphne's father, the actor-manager Sir Gerald du Maurier, played a great many roles in Barrie's plays, and his fame and fortune was in part the result of this. Daphne once wrote that Barrie understood her father better than anyone else did, and that he used this knowledge to create the plays in which Gerald starred.
Indeed, Gerald met Daphne's mother, Muriel, when they starred opposite one another in Barrie's play, "The Admirable Crichton"; and Gerald went on to appear as the first Captain Hook and Mr Darling in "Peter Pan", a story that was inspired by Daphne's cousins, the five Llewelyn Davies boys, whom Barrie subsequently adopted after they were orphaned. Their father, Arthur, had died of cancer just before Daphne was born in 1907, and their mother, Sylvia, who was Gerald's sister, and a celebrated Edwardian beauty adored by Barrie, also succumbed to cancer, three years later; a tragedy retold in the Hollywood movie, 'Finding Neverland', with Kate Winslet playing Sylvia and Johnny Depp as J.M Barrie.
The true story was rather darker than the Hollywood version, as I'm sure you can imagine. I live close to the graveyard in Hampstead where the Du Mauriers and Llewelyn Davies are buried, and their gravestones show that three of the five boys -- The Lost Boys -- died in tragic circumstances. George, the oldest, was killed in the trenches of the First World War, soon after he had left school. Michael drowned as an undergraduate at Oxford. And Peter -- the namesake for Peter Pan... well, his story is interwoven with Daphne's in my book, and his death was a terribly sad one.
Barrie was the author of Peter Pan, and a huge quantity of other plays and novels. His writing was inspired by, and threaded through, the Du Maurier family, to quite an extraordinary degree. Daphne's father, the actor-manager Sir Gerald du Maurier, played a great many roles in Barrie's plays, and his fame and fortune was in part the result of this. Daphne once wrote that Barrie understood her father better than anyone else did, and that he used this knowledge to create the plays in which Gerald starred.
Indeed, Gerald met Daphne's mother, Muriel, when they starred opposite one another in Barrie's play, "The Admirable Crichton"; and Gerald went on to appear as the first Captain Hook and Mr Darling in "Peter Pan", a story that was inspired by Daphne's cousins, the five Llewelyn Davies boys, whom Barrie subsequently adopted after they were orphaned. Their father, Arthur, had died of cancer just before Daphne was born in 1907, and their mother, Sylvia, who was Gerald's sister, and a celebrated Edwardian beauty adored by Barrie, also succumbed to cancer, three years later; a tragedy retold in the Hollywood movie, 'Finding Neverland', with Kate Winslet playing Sylvia and Johnny Depp as J.M Barrie.
The true story was rather darker than the Hollywood version, as I'm sure you can imagine. I live close to the graveyard in Hampstead where the Du Mauriers and Llewelyn Davies are buried, and their gravestones show that three of the five boys -- The Lost Boys -- died in tragic circumstances. George, the oldest, was killed in the trenches of the First World War, soon after he had left school. Michael drowned as an undergraduate at Oxford. And Peter -- the namesake for Peter Pan... well, his story is interwoven with Daphne's in my book, and his death was a terribly sad one.
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