Salley Vickers

This week, Jack is joined by author Salley Vickers. Salley's first novel Miss Garnet's Angel was published in the year 2000. Since then, she has gone on to pen 11 novels in total as well as collections of short stories. She is a Sunday Times Bestseller and her latest book The Gardener is now available in paperback.

Show Notes

We welcome onto the podcast this week author Salley Vickers. Salley's first novel Miss Garnet's Angel was published in the year 2000. Since then, she has gone on to pen 11 novels in total as well as collections of short stories. Previously, she worked as a teacher and a psycho-analyst. Her storytelling has won her many fans and she's a Sunday Times bestseller. Her latest book The Gardener is a beautiful reflection on family, place, immigration and nature and is now available in paperback.

Purchase The Gardener by Salley Vickers here

(1:43) Salley Vickers' Childhood
(7:34) Growing Up in a Communist Community
(19:26) Salley Vickers' First Novel and the Writing Process
(31:55) Confronting the Blank Page
(35:30) Pagan landscapes and The Gardener
(53:00) Dyslexia and Literature


The podcast is produced and presented by Jack Wrighton and the team at Mostly Books. It is edited by Story Ninety-Four. Find us on Twitter @mostlyreading & Instagram @mostlybooks_shop.

Meet the host:
Jack Wrighton is a bookseller and social media manager at Mostly Books. His hobbies include photography and buying books at a quicker rate than he can read them.
Connect with Jack on Instagram

The Gardener is published in the UK by Penguin.

Books mentioned in this episode include:
Tom's Midnight Garden by Phillipa Pearce - ISBN 9780192734501
A Midsummer Night's Dream by William Shakespeare
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass by Lewis Carol - ISBN 9781782692843
The Tale of Peter Rabbit by Beatrix Potter - ISBN 9780241513729
Seven Types of Ambiguity by William Empson - ISBN 9780140214789

To find more titles, visit our website

Creators & Guests

Host

Mostly Books

Award-winning indie bookshop in Abingdon, Oxfordshire.

What is Mostly Books Meets...?

Welcome to Mostly Books Meets, a podcast by the independent bookshop, Mostly Books. Booksellers from an award-winning indie bookshop chatting books and how they have shaped people's lives, with a whole bunch of people from the world of publishing - authors, poets, journalists and many more. Join us for the journey.

Sarah Dennis 0:24
Welcome to Mostly Books Meets... We the team at Mostly Books, an award winning independent bookshop in Abington. In this podcast series, we'll be speaking to authors, journalists, poets, and a range of professionals from the world of publishing. We'll be asking about the books that are special to them, from childhood favourites to the book that changed their lives and we hope you'll join us for the journey.

Jack Wrighton 1:09
We welcome onto the podcast this week author Salley Vickers, Salley's first novel Miss Garnet's Angel was published in the year 2000. Since then, she has gone on to pen 11 novels in total as well as collections of short stories. Previously, she worked as a teacher and a psycho-analyst. Her storytelling has won her many fans and she's a Sunday Times bestseller. Her latest book The Gardener is a beautiful reflection on family, place, immigration and nature and is now available in paperback. Sally Vickers, welcome to Mostly Books Meets. Thank you for joining us on the podcast. Sally, if you wouldn't mind I'd like to sort of take us back to your childhood. Am I right in saying you were born in Liverpool but you grew up in Stoke on Trent, is that correct?

Salley Vickers 1:55
Yes, I was born in Liverpool because my mother was a double amputee. She was bombed during the war. She thought actually she was going to die. But in fact, she was rescued in time, but her legs were burnt off. Her pelvis was also very, very badly damaged and she was told she shouldn't have children and being the woman she was, a woman of indomitable courage, she researched until... she found that she grew up in Liverpool. Her parents she's born in a bull her parents were my grandparents were Liverpudlians, of born and bred, and she found in Liverpool, a consultant obstetrician, and he actually turned out to be a rather famous obstetrician called Professor Jefcoate and it was 1948 and it was just as the National Health Service came into being so I was... he agreed to see her through the pregnancy and deliver me and of course, they didn't know whether I'd be a boy or a girl or if I'd be okay at all and I was his first National Health patient. So I was rather sort of celebrated by him. So I stayed there with my mother and who was staying with her parents, of course and then we went back to join my father who was the warden of an adult education, Trade Union College. In Barlaston, near Stoke on Trent, in what was called the Wedgwood Memorial Hall and we stayed there until dad lost his job because at that stage in his life, he was a communist and the college was jointly run by the Oxford department for continuing education. It was for trade union people who wanted to get an education so people like electricians, plumbers, or you know, from all walks of life came as I did there, my father taught them history and literature. Bridget Hill who went on to marry Christopher Hill, the famous Marxist historian, also taught there. There were many, many good teachers there, but Dad, at that time was an active communist and he was sacked because it was thought he was using his position to present views that were antipathetic, understandably, to the Oxford University's idea about education. So at that point we moved to London, and we lived with one of my several communist godparents, and actually, that is the origin really of the garden in the book that I have most recently published because she had the most beautiful garden and I suppose I remember, my earliest memories of childhood were of my god mother's garden. She and her husband, both communists till the end of their lives, didn't have children. She was his second wife. So he had children, but she did not and I was a sort of surrogate child. So that is in a very brief run through my childhood history or a locational history.

Jack Wrighton 5:15
And there's so much interesting information there. It's always hard to know where to start in terms of, you know, as long as you don't mind me sort of asking some follow-up questions and it's certainly very interesting, what you're saying about your mother and you being the sort of the first NHS baby is it were. So, you know, I suppose a great example of the work of the NHS in terms of, you know, is there a possibility that had the NHS not existed that your mother wouldn't have been able to... I imagine, it would have been quite expensive, you would have had to have gone private.

Salley Vickers 5:54
I mean, my parents had no money. My dad actually came from rather a rich upper-class family, but he'd signed over all his money to his mother. His father was killed in the First World War and he was supposed to inherit his father's wealth at the age of 21. But his mother, I think, understandably, thought he'd probably give it all to the Communist Party. So she got into sign it over. She never gave him any money. I mean, actually, she was an odd woman and I was very fond of her. But there was no doubt. She very much disapproved of my parents marriage, because my mother was thought to be able to lower class. About which, because he couldn't give a fig, so they didn't have any money. So it's quite possible that I wouldn't have been born without the NHS and I've always been a huge supporter of the NHS, you know, campaigns to support the NHS, I feel very strongly that the NHS has suffered, I feel that Boris Johnson's claims that money would go to the NHS, if Brexit happened to have been proved, lies and I feel very strongly about that and I've worked in the NHS, during my time working as a psychotherapist, and psychoanalyst, I did work in the NHS, as well as privately. So yes, I have a long, long history of the NHS, and I'm a huge supporter of it.

Jack Wrighton 7:18
Absolutely, and yes, yeah, as you said, from working in it, as well. So quite a long and well-established history with the NHS, as we all do in the UK, you know, it touches all of our lives and you know, that's why it's, it's so important. So you're very interesting that your father then lost that job because he was a, at that time, a committed communist. And it sounds like, because you were saying, sounds like you had a sort of army of communist godparents. Was it quite a close-knit community then? I imagine it was, you know, everyone sort of understandably, stuck together and moved in the same circles.

Salley Vickers 7:59
Yes, I had a very large extended communist family, you know, not related by blood, but related by principles and they were very important in my childhood, and Johnny Gullen, who was then the secretary of the British Communist Party. His children Heather and Andrew are still very, very close friends. Oh, Martin Kettle, son of Professor Arnold Kettle, who remained a communist until the end of his life. Arnold was my godfather, and Martin Kettle, the journalist, and I have remained very close friends. Betsy Giles and her husband. Giles was the surname but he was Granville Courtney Trelawny Giles, one of those upper-class communists, educated at Eton where Macmillan was his fag. Betsy was my godmother. The other godmother I had was, I had two other godmothers, Bridget, married to Christopher Hill, the Marxist historian, and Lily Marshall, who was the very working-class shop steward at the Wedgewood factory and who is a lesbian, I've had a delightful partner called Mary and after we moved from Stoke on Trent used to go back to stay with them. And they slept together in the double bed and I used to go into their bed in the morning and snuggle up between them. So I was introduced very, very early to the idea of gay relationships, which to me, seemed totally natural and actually my Arnold Kettle, although he was married and very happily married to Margot, and fathered both Martin and Nikki, who remained my very good friends. He was also gay and it was sort of accepted among us that you know, Margot knew he was gay. He loved Margot. She loved him. He was a very, very good father. But I mean, I suppose you'd say he was bisexual. Martin and I always think that he possibly had an affair with my mother at some point. We don't know we'd like to think that.

Jack Wrighton 10:14
Romantic speculation, is it?

Salley Vickers 10:16
Our romantic fact. This community, it was not only incredibly liberal, and in many ways, I would say very Christian without the God. It was amazingly forward-thinking about issues of sexuality and gender. It was also very, very Philo-Semitic, it was very pro-Jewish, which is odd when you think I mean, my parents left the Communist Party in 1956 after the Russians invaded Hungary, but my father was a prisoner of war for five years and he was moved to a punishment camp with members of the Jewish Brigade, the Palestine brigade, it was called, he always said he tried to convert them to Marxism, and they tried to Zionism and they won. So I grew up in a highly Philo-Semitic community, highly liberal in terms of sexuality community. I mean, half the comrades had married people in order to bring them into the country. They all believed in free love. The only real taboo in my upbringing was religion and people who've read my books will note there's a very strong strain of religious interest in my books. And my friend, Rowan Williams, former archbishop of Canterbury, said to me, you know, he said, Why are you so interested in religion given that you were brought up as a as an atheist household? And I said, Well, it's precisely because it was forbidden subject and he said, Hell, I wish I'd thought of that when I was bringing up my children. He has a marvellous sense of humour, which you don't get in his public statements. He's a very, very funny and very witty and ironical guy. So my great interest in religion really arises out of the fact that it was the one book that was not on the shelves of my parents. copious bookshelves was the Bible and when I got shipped to a rather posh girls public school, a state scholarship, paid for by the Labour government, actually, the one thing that my parents had to provide because the state wouldn't provide it was a Bible and a hymn book and I remember my father taking great exception to this, and he never wanted me to go to the school at all. He thought he thought I should go to a state school. But my mother who was rather ambitious, luckily, I think, persuaded him I should go and to get around to the subject of my writing, my interest in religion, I mean, in a sense, Ms Garnet's Angel, she starts life as a communist in the book and... if I say converted, I don't mean she's converted, and essentially becomes a church-going woman. But the religious paintings that she finds in the Chiesa dell'Angelo Raffaele, of the story of Tobias and the angel, the story of Tobias who travels with an anonymous man who turns out to be the archangel Raphael. Through her interest in that painting, she loses her belief in Marxism and communism, and comes into a love and understanding about what I will call a wider spiritual realm and now, that's pretty much there's no trace of Miss Garnett in me, except that in a sense, that reproduces my own sense that in cutting out that dimension of life, Marxism, and indeed atheism loses a great deal of what has always been very important, I think, to all civilizations, and all human cultures and I don't think it should be defined in a very narrow way by the church or the Church of England or, you know, particularities of Islam or Judaism, or Hinduism, or even Buddhism, which I admire very much. So, in a sense, the most important thing about my upbringing was what it excluded. I think.

Jack Wrighton 14:24
it's always, it's so wonderful speaking to, you know, authors, I don't know, a theme you always come across must be true for all children, as you know, what they're told, Oh, you know, that's, you know, we don't do that, or we don't think about that always becomes a point of interest. It is, you know, a tale as old as time but if you say, No, not that, then suddenly that becomes a, an interest that, you know, even reflects, I was brought up not in an atheist household, but certainly in the household in which the church or religion, you know, wasn't something really discussed. It wasn't a big part of our lives except for my grandmother that that was always talked about in a slightly kind of you know, we don't do that, we're not into that and yeah, certainly in my later teens, and in my you know, I'm not I don't assign to a particular church, but there's an interest in religion, I find religion and particularly religious art, very beautiful, inspiring and, you know, an interesting and yeah, it's still, you know, something I think I'll explore sort of throughout my life, so I can empathise with that.

Salley Vickers 15:34
Yes and actually, to be fair to my parents, although they were atheists. They were what I like to call cathedral-going atheists and the other in particular was very, very interested in art, and indeed, music. My father was tone deaf, so he wasn't, but he was very interested in poetry and he was a historian by training, although he finally worked as a trade union leader. He was an intellectual, but his political sympathies made him move into that sphere of life was a profession that made a committed socialist all his life and he was a Labour councillor, and I made them both my parents must be spinning in their grave, over the current government, but imagine, we always visited cathedrals, and I remember at nine, they took me to Chartres, which is the subject of The Cleaner of Chartres, a book, two years back. And I remember two things, one was being absolutely captivated by the labyrinth, which becomes very important in that novel, but also by the incredible beauty of the blue glass in the stained glass windows and that's to them, they, they, they took me there, they always took me to cathedrals, they always took me to historical churches, there was no taboo about religious paintings or religious buildings. It was just God that they were against and they never know, although at the, my mother suffered from Alzheimer's, so unhappily, she never read Miss Garnett's Angel. Although actually, I don't know that I could have written, it was my first novel and I was 50. I was actually 48 I was published when I was 50. I have a feeling I wouldn't have written had she not developed Alzheimer's because there's something about her constant focus and interest in me and on me, that was an inhibition for me. She was unable any longer to continue with this sort of over-attentive and very critical attitude towards me, she was really critical of me as well as been rather taken up with me. That's when I first wrote to be published, I'd always written but I kept it private. Okay, probably to keep it away from her. But my dad read Miss Garnett's Angel, and he absolutely loved it.

Jack Wrighton 18:03
Oh wonderful.

Salley Vickers 18:04
I think and, uh, you know, at the end of his life, after she died, I spent a lot of my time with him planning his funeral. And always the last thing he asked me to do is to buy him a hymn book and the next time I came back to visit him, he had chosen seven hymns. Dad, I think that's a bit over the top! Stick to three, and in the end, my brother and I only had two because we wanted to have I dreamed I Saw Joe Hill last night, which is a great ballad sung by Paul Riggs and about a trade union, American trade union leader. So we actually got it down to two!

Jack Wrighton 18:45
Yes, seven is quite Yeah, quite. That's a... yes, that's a loss of singing, isn't it? That would be quite....

Salley Vickers 18:52
He also asked for the church, the prayer book, funeral service and interestingly, Heather Gollan, the eldest child of Johnny Gollan, General Secretary of the British Communist Party is a Scottish minister. So like me. She was an apostate from atheism and indeed, my eldest son, Ben, is a Church of England vicar.

Jack Wrighton 19:18
Oh, wow. So yes, it

Salley Vickers 19:22
So this background does have produced a rather strong spiritual strain.

Jack Wrighton 19:26
Yes, yes. It really has! I'm interested as well, in you were saying that you were sort of writing it when you were 48. But your first book was published, but you know, when you were 50. So you would have you know, you'd always written before that that you'd had before that a career and that sort of aspect of your life. Do you divide your life in some ways mentally between sort of, you know, before being a published author and after, or do you not see it that way? Is it all sort of part of the I'm a general sort of journey.

Salley Vickers 20:03
I've never really done anything deliberately. I was actually teaching children with special needs for the then now defunct LCC, just trying to remember what it was called, which was a sort of... it was tutoring children who were either, as nowadays we'd say, excluded from school, or had more often had some kind of either physical illness or some reason, some sort of psychological disturbance and then I was a teacher in adult education. I worked with the, actually for the same department of continuing education in Oxford as my Dad, and I actually taught, my room, I had a very large class and my room was named after the very man who sacked Dad!

Jack Wrighton 20:54
Oh, my goodness, oh, wow.

Salley Vickers 20:57
Which is quite funny. Dad was like this. I mean, he was totally sympathetic to them sacking him because he's by that changed his attitude to the Communist Party. Then I taught as an actual tutor in English literature, university tutor, then I trained as a union psycho analyst and I am still a union psychoanalyst and a psychotherapist, I mean, a psychotherapist, when I was working in the NHS, because obviously, you can't pay for analysis, an analyst when I was working in private practice, I did a lot of work with people who had either attempted suicide or had some traumatic experience with death and I actually did quite a lot of work, in the early stages of work with people with particularly men who had post-traumatic stress disorder and I've worked quite interestingly, with some Vietnam veterans, that was interested. But I also worked with the children of the children of Holocaust survivors, who very often didn't know the backgrounds of their grandparents, but nevertheless manifested, I mean, very typically eating disorders. And I wrote Miss Garnett's Angel when I was still working in these sort of areas and it was such a success that I hadn't really intended to particularly, you know, make a career as writing the book and I was very, very lucky, I got a very, very good agent, immediately, who sold it immediately and it was a word of mouth bestseller, which was, you know, a magnificent stroke of luck, actually and I do think luck is very important in a writer's career, there are many, many very fine writers who are not lucky in their lifetimes anyway, sometimes they get it later. I always say, you know, it's luck, as much as talent, I think. I think there is a degree of talent, I hope I have a degree of talent. But I also think there's luck. But you see, because I was seeing people in a very intimate way, I began to see that I couldn't really go on writing about characters and their intimate lives because I realised, although I have never done this, I never would do it and I've never taken any of my characters from life ever because I think taking from life is never as convincing actually as taking it from within your unconscious self. I realised that they would be worrying all the time that I would use their material and although I'd certainly use my insights, my psychological insights in my writing a lot. It's never the case, I've taken it from anyone's actual life or anyone's actual history ever. I wouldn't do that from an ethical point of view. But I wouldn't want to do that either. But I knew I also began to be, you know, use began to read articles about me and details about my private life would emerge. Now that isn't terribly helpful, necessarily, if you're a psychoanalyst, I didn't particularly mind people knowing details of my life, but they can mind you know. For example, I went through a very horrible divorce. Well, that's not what people necessarily want to know about that analyst. They might start to feel sorry for you, or Yes, whatever and you don't really, it's not helpful to them to be feeling sorry for you. So that sort of thing began to emerge. I had a very, very horrible divorce around the time of Miss Garnett's Angel because the man I had married was very jealous of my success. He was another writer, who was not so successful as a writer, although he was rather famous in another dimension. So because Miss Garnett was success, I took a gamble and decided to become a full-time writer and the gamble just about paid off, although a writer's financial life is pretty dodgy, I mean, I get reasonably good advances are good cause I'm a reasonably good seller. I mean, three or four times been a Sunday Times bestseller. But I mean, I'm not a kind of, I'm not a JK Rowling or, you know, one of the really top bestsellers and I've never won a literary prize partly I think because of my subject matter which a lot of people have not read my books think, you know, I write about angels, and in this book, The Gardener, you didn't mention it, and I'm going to be straight and mention it, has fairies in it and I think people get the idea that I'm whimsical. I'm not the Archangel Raphael is not a whimsical Angel. The fairies in my books are not whimsical fairies. But there's a kind of snobbish literary circle, I'm afraid, that looks down on that sort of subject and also the fact that I'm thought of sometimes as a religious writer, there's a bit of sneering about that and I mean, without wanting to blow my own trumpet, I think I'm an extremely literary writer with a strong philosophical interest. I'm read widely in philosophy, and I review a lot of very high-minded philosophical books. But I was actually in line to be on the shortlist, the year Miss Garnett's Angel was published and I wasn't known and at the time, one of the chair of the judges actually confided in me that actually, I was shortlisted because I wasn't known, that's not nowadays, you know, it's better to not be known to be on the Booker shortlist. And I've been a Man Booker judge, so I sort of know the procedure. But what I'm really saying is, it's a precarious living, I make and you know, sometimes my books sell very well like Miss Garnett's Angel and The Cleaner of Chartres and The Librarian, sometimes they don't sell so well. Now, my best work, The Cousins, I think, my best book, two of my best books Where Three Roads Meet and Cousins, which I regard as my two best novels, didn't sell particularly well. So it's a precarious living. But it's an incredibly enriching one. I mean first of all the process of writing is always exciting. I never know where I'm going with a book. The readers are wonderful, you know, I mean, I have wonderful readers. I've only once in my life ever had a nasty letter, which is amazing and that objected to the fact that I used God is one of my characters in Mr Golikely's Holiday and she thought it was blasphemous. By the way Rowan Williams likes it very much so yes, okay. Various theologians like very much, I think, probably not blasphemous. But anyway, she was offended. My readers' correspondence from my readers, it's an absolute joy that people often say, I'm sorry to bother you and I hope you don't mind me writing that always write back and say, Look, there is nothing a writer likes more than to get a letter we love it because it's lonely and arduous and every time I start a book, I think I'm not going to be able to do this. Finishing a book, finishing the gardener, which I loved writing, was one of the books I you know, some books are really hard to write. The Other Side of You, which I think is another my best books was really hard to write. The Gardener was a joy from start to finish. I wrote it during lockdown and I loved writing it and I loved lockdown. Because it gave me privacy. I was in the country. I had long hours of wonderful, blissful solitude with no commitments, no responsibilities. I live alone. The only thing I missed was my wonderful grandchildren who I adore and I'm very, very close to and to a lesser extent, my dear sons, who I don't miss nearly as much as I miss my grandchildren. My grandchildren are frankly nicer and their much more beautiful. Being children. I love children, I get on really well with children, much less well with adults. So writing that was an absolute joy, but sometimes it can be hell and you know, like at the moment, I'm just thinking, I'm not sure I can write this next book gets too hard and it's nearly always very, very hard to begin with. It's sort of like driving through a street where there are a lot of sleeping policemen, you know, there's bumps in the record and you bump along and you bump along and then you get to a point when it's suddenly on the top of the hill and you wizz downhill and then it's wonderful because somehow the book takes is over and it writes itself. But starting a book I always think, oh god, why aren't I doing something else? You know, can I get a job in Sainsbury's? Can I go and work in a local charity shop? Can I, I don't know, become a garden designer? Can I run an antique shop?

Jack Wrighton 30:19
There must be some other way, yes.

Salley Vickers 30:21
The most awful thing I've decided to do. Because although I know what the I always know the character, I always know the voice of the character and I always know the setting, but I don't know what's going to happen and I can't always find the words sometimes the words won't come at the beginning. I suppose it's like being constipated. Although I never actually am constipated, I don't have that sort of digestion, or it's like childbirth when you can't push the baby out. It's very like childbirth because you forget the pain of childbirth. When you've had a baby, the joy and bliss of having a baby is so overwhelming or was for me that I remember the next time around when I was going into labour with my second child. I thought, oh my god, I'd forgotten how painful this is. Why am I doing it? Too late! So it's like that and I'm at that stage at the moment. It's out in the world with its beautiful cover. With a love it had a wonderful hardback cover, which I chose the painting for and then they let the painting for the Edvard Munch rather than uncharacteristic Edward Munch of a woman picking tulips, which I absolutely adore and they've done a lovely cover, which at first I thought was a bit glittery. But actually people have persuaded me that the glitter is rather fetching. So I've come out a bit cross about the glitter at first, because I thought it made it a bit trivial. It's not a trivial book. But yes, anyway, I've rambled on a lot.

Jack Wrighton 31:53
No, not at all! It's very interesting hearing you talk about, again, I love seeing the sort of, you know, the common aspects of when I'm speaking to different authors, you know, the things that sort of unite them and certainly, that initial start of the novel always comes up as you know, the terror of the kind of the blank page of, you know, getting the things started and the pain involved, it is something that seems to be a common theme with, with authors.

Sally Vickers 32:27
It's not really the blank page actually is this, it's in my head, I know that I hear the voice. I don't know what's going to happen to the character necessarily, but I hear them and I can see the place. It's getting it out of my head down my arms into my computer. It's not a logical block, actually, it's not really even a mental block. When people talk about writer's block, it's not in my mind, I know I've got a very active imagination, I've got a lot of stories there, plenty waiting to be written, is getting it down the arms and through the you know, that's the thing I come, please do that and that's the frustration.

Jack Wrighton 33:10
I suppose it's almost like an act of translation, you know, translating it from the, I don't know, the sort of the 3D aspect of the mind, which is, you know, balancing so many different things at once and putting it in there.

Salley Vickers 33:25
Exactly. It's the multi-dimensional quality of the imagination and the unconscious. Translating that, that's very well put Jack. It's translating the multi-dimensional, I'd say four-dimensional quality and the unconscious in the imagination into well, the two dimensions of the page, and I suppose three dimensions of the story. So it's more like geometry. It's a geometrical translation. That's really well put, thank you. That's helped me understand it better. I lived with a great mathematician, Roger Penrose. We had a quite a long and important relationship and he was terribly interesting about four-dimensional geometry. He's a lovely man and I rather stupidly left him, one of the many great mistakes of my life, but we had some wonderful conversations very late at night and he was he got me very interested in four-dimensional geometry. I spoke to him quite recently, because somebody is writing about his biography and they wanted to talk to me about our relationship and I said, Well, I have to talk to Roger first to see if it's okay. So I rang him up and he said, Well, I can't talk at the moment ring me back. So I rang him back a few days later when I was actually waiting to see my physiotherapist in the carpark and he said, I can't talk to you right now because actually I've just won the Nobel Prize!

Jack Wrighton 34:50
Oh, what a wonderful thing you know, to be told.

Salley Vickers 34:53
I was in the shower and I heard I'd won the Nobel Prize and now you've just rang me up and I got rather lots of people I have to speak to so I'll talk to you later!

Jack Wrighton 35:02
Oh my goodness, what an amazing reason not to be able to talk right now. How fantastic! And one thing I'd be really interesting to talk about is I've seen in other interviews or writing, I was reading the segment on your website about writing The Gardener and the talk about the importance of place because am I right in saying it's set in the Welsh Marches?

Salley Vickers 35:29
Yes.

Jack Wrighton 35:30
And also, the thing I found really interesting, and it relates to what you were saying earlier about the fairies in the book is the sort of pagan landscape of the UK, which I feel particularly when you go to certain parts of them of the UK, it suddenly sort of reveals itself in a way that it doesn't everywhere and I would just love to hear more about that, because it's such a fascinating subject.

Salley Vickers 35:55
Yes, well, you know, I said, I'm interested in religion, but it's not confined to Christianity, nor is it confined to Judaism, or aspects of Islam in which I'm very interested, particularly Sufism, and Buddhism and Hinduism. I'm also very interested in the Greek gods, pretty well informed about them and I mean, I read a bit of Greek not, I mean, ancient Greek, not terribly well, but I taught the ancient Greeks and translation a lot but I'm also very, very interested in, in the pagan, Celtic religions, and I really got interested in those as a child, mostly through Rosemary Sutcliff. She was one of my favourite children's authors, and I read a lot of Rosemary Sutcliffe. I mean, actually, she's pretty much an adult writer. I reread her Eagle of the Knights trilogy quite recently and I thought, Gosh, this is adult writing. But she wrote a lot about Celtic Britain and she read a lot about Roman Britain, but Greek Roman Britain, of course, it was Celtic Britain, and then when the Romans and the Romans, of course, converted to Christianity with Constantine, so there was a bit of a sort of piecemeal conversion to Christianity in Roman Britain, but when the Romans left, the pagan religion came back, the ancient pagan Celtic religion came back and particularly you find it on the Welsh marches. I had a house in Prestine, just the other side on the Welsh side of the Welsh marches. In fact, if you walked out of my house and crossed a bridge, quite literally, I mean, literally in the correct use of the word, 50 yards outside my house, it was England. Prestine is a lovely, lovely border town, I suppose you'd call it, which has moved back and forth between Wales and England throughout its history. So I got very interested in that whole area and there are a very large number of so called Holy Wells, which were taken over by the Christians when Christianity then came back to Britain in the sixth, seventh, seventh, eighth century, be Christianised, with Augustine came, and what was called the Roman church was in, I suppose you could call it competition with the Celtic Church, the Celtic branch of Christianity and then at the Council of Whitby, it was decided that the Roman church should prevail. So I think regrettably, Britain became Roman Christian and that is, you know what, when we talk about Roman Catholicism, it's because it's founded in Rome. But the Celtic Church was not founded in Rome and the Celtic Christians were much more sympathetic to the pagan religions and the pagan Celtic religion worshipped water in the form of Holies, springs and Holy Wells, and pools, and stones, and trees, and grooves. Now, the Roman Christians cut down the sacred trees and their sacred grooves, but they couldn't do anything about the sacred wells, and the sacred springs. So they converted them to Christianity and that's what may be interested in. So you have a large number of sacred wells in that part of the world, which still are they're dedicated to, well, Saint Winifred is a famous one, but the saints that I wrote about in The Gardener is a real Saint, called Saint Mildburh, who has a number of wells attributed to her and in the book, I make up a sacred spring and a sacred pool named, St. Ursula, which my heroine was called Hassie discovers. It doesn't actually exist, but there are in fact a number of springs that are in life dedicated to Saint Mildburgh, she was the prioress of a monastic order as Much Wenlock which also features in the book. It's no longer extant, but there are the remains of a later Cluniac priory at Much Wenlock, which you can go and visit and I have my character go and visited in the book. So she gets interested in this Saint Mildburh and through her interest in Saint Mildburh. But like as she gets interested in the whole business of the pagan Celtic religion, and she discovers that the Roman Christians cut down the sacred trees, they couldn't get rid of the sacred stones, but they removed the sacred element, but they, they couldn't get rid of these sacred springs and it's through her discovery of a spring at the bottom of the very old garden of the very old house that she moves into, that she discovers that the wood that she walked through to get to the village is in fact an ancient sacred wood that has not been cut down and in this sacred wood, there is an ancient sacred pool, which is really an entrance. I mean, I don't spell it out and none of the reviews mentioned this element in the book. I think they either didn't notice it, because I mentioned it, I wanted to treat it very, very subtly and as it were, you know, out of the corner of your eye, and not heavy in any way. Either they didn't notice it, because they read the books so fast as people tend to do when they're reviewing, or they're embarrassed by it, because really, it's the entrance to what's called the Other World and the Other World is where the pagan Other people, which is what the fairies, which we now called fairies, which have nothing to do with people with gossamer wings, you know that? They're much more sinister and much more powerful, and much more like the ancient gods of Greece barely and they have a transforming effect on the life of the principal character Hassie and there's a gap in the heart of the book, which I'm sad to say many readers didn't understand and rather irritated by because they didn't understand why. What was happening in this last section of the book. But if you read the book carefully, you'll see what's happening. Something has happened to her in the woods, which is transformative in a very, very important way. So it's not just about someone who had happy love and moving out of London into the rural countryside, adored by a garden, although that happens to and it's not just about sibling rivalry, because the two women who inhabit the house of sisters, though that's in it, too and it's not about post Brexit though, that's an it too, it's much more about the powerful effect of ancient history on the present, on certain people, if they are of a certain imaginative type, and I'm of that type, and quite a lot of people are that. I read a piece about fairies actually, for Unheard, which is an online magazine, which has the potential of being right-wing, but it isn't really right-wing, it's sort of free thinking. It's a shame, it has that reputation, I'm actually very left-wing. But anyway, I wrote a piece about fairies for it, because none of the broadsheets would take a piece about fairies, and like got an enormous response there quite a lot of people are willing to accept that these are beings that have a real place in the imagination. You don't have to actually believe in tangible fairies, although a lot of people do, to realise that like angels, you know, you don't have to believe in tangible angels. They are important and time-honoured images for states of being that we don't really have a vocabulary for any longer and that artists and poets and dramatists, I mean, not least Shakespeare in A Midsummer Night's Dream have used for generations. You know, I mean, Homer writes about the gods. Sophocles writes about the gods, Dante writes... You know, I mean, you all through literature, you have people writing about these metaphysical states of being which have been profoundly important to people because we don't have other ways of describing these kinds of experiences. We have psychological terms, but they're not as rich and as generative and as appealing to the imagination, I think. So that's why I wanted to write about it. You know, I wanted her immersion in this ancient culture and ancient countryside, not just the process of gardening, although I think that too can be very regenerative and a lot of people found it soon lockdown and I did as I was writing the book. But the exposure to the ancient past and the mementoes of the ancient past and the stones and the springs and the wells and indeed, the ancient buildings, they affect us and they can affect us in a restorative and regenerative and enlarge new way and I think that's very important. There's elements in all my books, you know, whether it's the ancient past and Venice, or the ancient past of France, or the Welsh marches, it's partly history and it's partly the spiritual and aesthetic aspects of that history that I want to write about and I think we're living in a time which is so materialistic, that people are thirsting for that sort of experience and if I can give it to them through my books, I hope it will encourage them, you know, to visit churches and cathedrals to visit ancient buildings to visit ancient parts of the countryside to explore ancient woods, and, you know, to visit art galleries, because all of these things are great freedoms, and they are widely available to us. I mean, you know, apart from having to pay to go to art galleries, which in our country at least they're free. It doesn't cost very much to get to the Welsh borders, it doesn't cost anything to explore, as I do the holy springs on the Welsh marches.

Jack Wrighton 46:34
I think that really reflects on, you know, the important work of that, you know, I suppose, we might say, in an academic sense of the sort of the humanities or, you know, writing or art or things like that, because, you know, we do seem to live in a world where if you can't sort of pick it up and go, Oh, here it is, or it doesn't have some sort of obvious, I don't know, financial benefits, someone that, you know, it doesn't matter. But of course, with books, with fiction or with theatre, art, you know, any of those, they can express and explore things that have importance beyond that, if that makes sense?

Salley Vickers 47:12
If there's one thing I would like to say in this podcast, it's how furious I am at the disrespect that is currently being shown towards the humanities and the arts. The arts and the humanities are what give life meaning. They are what allow people to escape the confines of their lived lives, which are often very miserable, and restricted, and financially poor. The demise of libraries is one of the great tragedies of our age, it's disgusting. We were very poor because my dad had lost his job. But every Saturday morning, he took me to the library and most of my knowledge of children's literature comes from a wonderful children's librarian who I celebrate in my book, The Librarian. I even gave my heroine her name, Miss Blackwell. She was remarkable, she introduced me to Rosemary Sutcliffe, she introduced me to what I regard as one of the great children's novels of all time, which is, Philippa Pearce's Tom's Midnight Garden. Actually, she introduced to Philippa Pearce, I bought Tom's Midnight Garden with a ten shilling book token for my 10th birthday. Sorry, my ninth birthday. So without those children's libraries, I wouldn't be writing now. Tom's Midnight Garden is the book that changed my life. And most of what I write about, I acquired through the astonishing use of time that Philip appears makes in that room. It is a remarkable book. It's up there with Alice Through the Looking Glass for my money with Lewis Carroll and Alice Through the Looking Glass and Tom's Midnight Garden and the works of Beatrix Potter are more important to me than any writer other than Shakespeare because they so fed my child's imagination. I would never, ever have got a scholarship St. Paul's, if I had not read those books, I would never have got Cambridge on a scholarship if I had not read those books. If I hadn't had a children's library, I would never be right the writer I am today. So this disrespect of the arts and the removal of it from universities' systems is in my view, an outrage and if anyone wants to join me and form an organisation to fight against this barbarism, and Philistine-ism, then please get in touch with me because it's disgraceful. It's how we learn to think about other people through them in books. It's how we meet, how children the children of other cultures of other religions and other political persuasions, of other races, of other backgrounds, other financial situations, through meeting them through books. It's how we learn to think morally about other people and other situations. It's how we expand our understanding, how we can travel without polluting the atmosphere because we go in our imagination to different cultures. It's how we go back into all the history I learned through about Roman Britain, I learned through Rosemary Sutcliffe, not through any history teaching. It's disgraceful, but people are not being allowed to... It's what gives life meaning. Reading poetry is what is for me the most important thing, probably that I do. I read novels, I read non-fiction, all the time, all the time. But for me reading poetry now, if I'd never been introduced to poetry by great teachers, who had been taught to think properly about poetry and helped me see how to make connections through poetic images, if I've not read William Empsen's Seven Types of Ambiguity and understood how ambiguous you can work within an image or a metaphor, I wouldn't be the person I am, I wouldn't be such a reasonably good mother or I think a really rather good grandmother without it. So if it is one thing you keep please in this podcast is this praise I want to say to all my teachers, to my librarian, my primary school teacher, who got us to read Keats, you know, a state primary school teacher we read Keats, my wonderful English teachers, my marvellous Cambridge teachers, the wonderful people I taught in my adult education classes. All of these people have helped me be a better person, not a better parent and a better writer. So yes, well end of outrage.

Jack Wrighton 51:48
Yes, because you know completely I mean, you know, I can think back to you know, to using the library in my local town, which is lucky enough still to have there's we're very lucky here in Abingdon. We have a great local library, that...

Salley Vickers 52:02
Yes, I know, I lived in Oxford for a long time.

Jack Wrighton 52:05
Oh right? Yes. So you will be familiar.

Salley Vickers 52:08
I lived in Oxfordshire as well. I mean, I brought up my children in Upper Heyford,

Jack Wrighton 52:12
Ahh, wonderful. Yes. Yeah.

Salley Vickers 52:14
I taught adult education classes in Abingdon, indeed. I had I ran WA classes in Abingdon. Yes, I know it very well. Yes.

Jack Wrighton 52:23
And you know, we're very lucky to have that and certainly for me, you know, there's you know, many teachers, you know, English teachers and people that you know, I can think of and be grateful for in terms of you know, where I am today, because, you know, I think for some that you know, the humanities can be a great confidence booster at school. Initially, I wasn't a very good student. But I think for me, it was through drama and through also having a very good English literature teacher, that I found a sort of another way in, if that makes sense to sort of thinking about the world.

Salley Vickers 53:00
It's the same, you know, my son Ben is very, very dyslexic, although we didn't really notice that because I didn't send my children to school and his elder child, my granddaughter is, well, I think she's probably a bit dyslexic too, I mean, she's terrible speller, but she had two great teachers in her life. One was in her primary school, and one was happily in her comprehensive school and she also joined a theatre and she's quite a quite brilliant actress. Her A-levels from a very good Sixth Form College, but it was those two teachers. The primary school teacher was clearly rather dyslexic himself but a very good English teacher and she had a brilliant English teacher at her comprehensive school who just got her and didn't care at all about the spelling. She got so good through that she actually got a scholarship to Bedales, although she decided not to go there because she didn't... She thought it was too elitist. So did she's bravely gone off to Sixth Form College, a rather large sixth form college. But, you know, that's through the understanding of a certain kind of teacher who has that kind of sensibility and like you, she wouldn't have done anything without them. They picked her out, they picked out that she really got books, and she really got drama. It was drama and books that did it. It wasn't her ability. You know, she writes really very, very well. But it's, I mean, you know, I mean, I don't know what she's going to do in A-Level because, you know, she still can't spell.

Jack Wrighton 54:43
Yes. I mean, I was, well, I still am that, you know, I was very dyslexic when I was younger.

Salley Vickers 54:51
There you see, I didn't, nobody noticed that about me. They just thought why is she such a bad speller. I was a very good reader, I think certain my sons and my son and my granddaughter are the same and I'm the same. There's nothing wrong with our reading because I worked out I see the shape of a word, but I don't see the component letters. I can see necessarily, because I see the shape. But you know, asked me how many C's and S's in it, I can still freeze.

Jack Wrighton 55:21
I'm so glad you've said that because necessarily, for me, it's always a tricky word is always a difficult word. I know that sounds funny, but I feel...

Salley Vickers 55:30
I still and without spell correct I still reverse letters, you know, I always write from as form, you will still have to correct it for me when I'm writing articles and so I still don't see it. I am one of the lucky ones, and my son, and so is my granddaughter, and you are too that we can read. But spelling, I still can't spell.

Jack Wrighton 55:58
For me, my partner is a very, is very good with the soldiers, the mechanics of English, you know, in terms of the grammar, that spelling and everything and to me, that's almost a sort of a magic of its own. It's not a world I understand. Whereas, you know, I am a reader, and we have parents that come in, and they sometimes, you know, they say to us, oh, you know, our child's just been diagnosed with dyslexia and, you know, they're quite concerned that they won't have a good relationship with books and what we always say, you know, you don't have to, you know, worry about that now, because actually, we find that, you know, firstly, there is some great, you know...

Salley Vickers 56:36
Or great audiobooks as well.

Jack Wrighton 56:38
Great audiobooks, exactly and that there's a real, there's a lot of graphic novels for children now, which are beautifully told stories.

Salley Vickers 56:47
Oh, wonderful graphic novels! The rise of the graphic novel for children is fabulous.

Jack Wrighton 56:53
Oh absolutely, because it really is. It really is an art form all of its own. I remember I was looking around a bookshop in France, and I found out my partner studied French at university, and that's his area of study and I had not really known that, you know, in France, kind of the graphic novel is a...

Salley Vickers 57:15
I've just come back from there, and its wonderful.

Jack Wrighton 57:18
It's a really celebrated thing over there and I think I would like to see more of that here because they're, you know, they're wonderful, you know, you're getting beautiful visual art as well as, you know, wonderful writing, what a brilliant combination. So it's wonderful to see that particularly for children in the UK, that's an expanding area.

Salley Vickers 57:39
Also, my children, I gave them the comic book version of Shakespeare and they loved it. I mean, it really reminded me of it the other day because my eldest son's younger daughter loves graphic novels, so I sent her a lot of graphic novels and I said to him, it's a shame we didn't have them in your day because you because they love comics. My youngest son still collect comics is great. He's just written a book actually about a gang of children who run an underground resistance comic in a dystopian society and he said but we did you gave us the comic book, Shakespeare's don't you remember? And I had completely forgotten that they were rather good, they were very good.

Jack Wrighton 58:23
Yes. Yeah. Absolutely. A really wonderful, you know, way. Yes. You know, to come across Shakespeare, particularly on the page if you're not seeing it on the stage. Sally, I'm really sorry. I think it's come to the end of our conversation. I could keep talking forever, I could. It's been really wonderful talking with you and hearing about your life, your inspirations and your writing. Of course, The Gardener is available from Mostly Books and from other good bookstores as well as, of course, do support your local libraries as well and get it from there as well. Sally, thank you so much for joining us on Mostly Books Meets

Salley Vickers 58:59
It's been a huge pleasure to talk to you, Jack and I'll come and visit you if I may.

Jack Wrighton 59:03
Oh please do, please do, that would be a great honour. Thank you.

Salley Vickers 59:06
I would love that. Okay. Goodbye and Lovely to meet you.

Sarah Dennis 59:12
All of the books mentioned during the podcast, are available to buy for the Mostly Books website. This podcast has been presented and produced by members of the team at Mostly Books in Abingdon. If you enjoyed what you heard, please rate review and subscribe, because apparently, it helps people find us.