Desert Island Discs interview part 2: Debut
10:45 to 19:00 of the interview, dealing with Sutcliff's work as a painter, her first books, her only relationship, and her writing.
RP: When you were I think about fourteen, you went to art school.
RS: Yes, I left school, which one could do at fourteen in those days, and put in three years at art school.
RP: Which form of art attracted you most?
RS: Well I did the general art course - painting in oils and watercolours and, you know, making charcoal drawings of the Apollo Belvedere from the north, south, east, and west.
RP: Of course, yes. And you set up as a miniaturist.
RS: Yes.
RP: Did you find commissions coming in?
RS: Yes I did. In the war I had quite a lot of work to do. Quite often rather sadly from photographs of young soldiers who weren’t coming back, and things of that sort.
RP: Yes. Where were you living at this point?
RS: In north Devon. My father had gone back into the Navy.
RP: Did you work at home?
RS: Yes. And also at the local art school; I was allowed to use a room.
RP: Did you enjoy it?
RS: I enjoyed it, but I found miniature painting cramping.
RP: You did very well at it; you exhibited at the Royal Academy.
RS: I was a good craftsman - but I always had this feeling of having my elbows tucked too close to my sides when I was doing it.
RP: Why did you give it up? I mean, to do what?
RS: Well I gave it up to write. I think for this very reason, that I began to feel that I’d got to to something to break out. And I could write as big as ever I wanted to. I could use an enormous canvas if I wanted to.
RP: Had you written as a child, -
RS: No -
RP: - had you written stories?
RS: No. No, I wasn’t at all sort of writing-minded at school.
RP: How did it start, what did you want to write?
RS: I don’t even know, I just wanted to write. And I sort of scribbled happily most of the time through the war.
RP: What did you scribble about?
RS: Oh, it was quite dreadful. It was rather a mixture of Jeffrey Farnol and, oh, Georgette Heyer?
RP: Well, they’re two good -
RS: They’re both good writers, but I took the worst elements from both of them.
RP: It was history that fascinated you the most.
RS: It was history that fascinated me.
RP: So, what happened, did you send your stories away to anybody?
RS: No, I never even thought about getting them published; I wrote purely for my own pleasure. And then, about the end of the war, I did a retelling of some British legends - sent them to an old friend, sort of to see if he thought they were any good. Because you can never show things that matter very deeply to your own family.
RP: Yes that’s strangely true.
RS: So I sent them off to this old friend, Colonel [Arthur?] Crookenden, and he, unknown to me, had a friend who had married into the Oxford University Press. So he sort of passed these scripts along to her, and sort of said, “Show these to your husband.” And the very first thing I knew about was I had a letter from the Oxford University Press saying they didn’t want them, which was a surprise to me as I didn’t know they’d got them. And saying would I try doing a Robin Hood for them instead? So I did a Robin Hood, and that was how I became launched as a writer. [The Chronicles of Robin Hood, 1950].
RP: So there you were, a published author.
RS: Yes.
RP: It was about that time that romance came into your life.
RS: Yes. My one and only boyfriend, who I had two separate love affairs with, but the same chap both times. He was a sergeant pilot - bomber pilot - just out of the war, with, oh, they used to call it shell-shock. I think now they call it combat fatigue.
RP: Yes.
RS: Anyhow he was the sort of person who had permanently dilated pupils and shot out of his chair if anybody slammed a door. And we had a lovely two years, sort of very gentle love affair.
RP: It was your decision not to marry him.
RS: I don’t honestly know whose decision it was; the situation became impossible, my own family was so against it, and everything. And I think people’s feelings were very different in those days to what they are now, about anybody with a disability being allowed to have any emotions. And neither of us were very grown up - even Rupert wasn’t very grown up - and we just couldn’t cope. So that was that.
RP: Another record.
RS: Yes, well it was the one that everybody was singing and whistling just at the time that Rupert was around: Ivor Novello’s “We’ll Gather Lilacs.”
[music]
RP: Anne Ziegler and Webster Booth, “We’ll Gather Lilacs” from Ivor Novello’s Perchance to Dream.
RP: So there you were, Rosemary, a published author - well you’d published one book -
RS: Yes.
RP: What happened next?
RS: Well I just went on writing. And I produced about three books which I very much enjoyed writing but which were very much for little girls. [The Queen Elizabeth Story, 1950; The Armourer’s House, 1951; Brother Dusty-Feet, 1952]. And they all had sort of, rather “more in sorrow than in anger” reviews.
RP: What do you mean by that?
RS: Well I think the reviewers thought they were quite pretty and sweet, but much too sweet. [laughter] And obviously thought I was just going on like this, sort of “Oh my God forever more and more of these books are going to come out.” And then after about three I began to find my own voice, very slowly. [Simon, 1953; The Eagle of the Ninth, 1954].
RP: How many books have you published so far?
RS: Well I think my most recent one was my forty-third. [Bonnie Dundee, 1983].
RP: That’s a lot of books.
RS: That’s a lot of books.
RP: And they’re all historical.
RS: They’re all historical. I don’t think I could write a modern one; I don’t know how.
RP: Now, they’re really falling into two categories: they’re set either before the Norman conquest, or in the sixteenth or seventeenth century. Never about the Middle Ages.
RS: I can’t write about the Middle Ages -
RP: Why?
RS: I don’t know; it’s not that I’m not interested; I love reading about the Middle Ages. I think I can’t accept the way that religion permeated everything. The tremendous stranglehold that religion had on people’s minds and consciences. I can’t take this.
RP: In which period do you feel most at home?
RS: I think in Roman Britain. I always feel it’s perhaps a little shameful to be quite so at home with the Romans, because they really were a very bourgeois lot, but I do feel very at home with them; I feel, “[exhalation] Here I am back at home again” when I get back into a Roman story.
RP: Do really feel at home to the extent of believing in reincarnation or having any feeling that “I’ve been here before”?
RS: I do get feelings I’ve been here before. I think I do believe in reincarnation; I hope I do, because I think it’s the one thing that makes sense, that makes for justice and a really sensible pattern to life.
RP: How do you work, do you write in longhand, do you dictate?
RS: I write in longhand. I can only create from the top of my head, down my right arm, and out of the point of my pen.
RP: Do you work regular hours?
RS: No. Too many things happen all the time. I begin work usually the middle of the morning, and I work on and off, as opportunity offers, until say seven o’clock, sort of supper time. But so many things happen through the day that quite often I only get an hour’s work in, and sometimes I’ve done a whole seven solid hours.
RP: How do you set about your research, do you go down to the local library, do you get books sent to you?
RS: I get things from the local library. I also belong to the London library. I am quite shameless about writing to people - you know, people who know about breeding horses or whatever it is know about and asking a particular question. And people are usually very kind about sharing their own expertise with you.
RP: Your detail is meticulous, I mean, the buckles -
RS: I think so, I hope so.
RP: - of a centurion’s belt are described, and I’m sure they’re right.
RS: I hope they’re right; I take great pains that they should be right!
RP: Yes. You go to museums?
RS: Yes. And of course again I’ve got quite a lot of books on things like the buckles of centurions’ belts. I do rely very much also on this feeling, “does this smell right,” does it have the right feel to it.
RP: Do you get letters, have you ever made any error of which you were ashamed, of which a lot of students wrote and said, “look, you haven’t done this right”?
RS: I’ve never had anything that a lot of people have written to me about, but I have once or twice made an error, which has almost invariably been picked up by a sixth form schoolboy. [laughter] Sixth form schoolboys are dreadful; they know so much.