M.C. BEATON
On her time as a crime reporter: “The only time I ever got punched was by a Daily Mail photographer, because I was keeping crime witnesses away from the papers. It was sordid, ghastly – the poverty, dear God. The lice, the smell, the razor gangs… the axemen even had their own pub to disassociate from the lower class, the razor gangs. When I got a transfer to London, I thought I’d died and gone to heaven. There, the newspapers were all nice to one another.”
On moving to the Cotswolds: “I remember looking at all these hills through the fog and thinking that there was a probably a splendid party going on over on the other side, to which I hadn’t been invited. And then, when the time came to go back up to London, I suddenly felt as though I no longer belonged: I couldn’t wait to get on the train [back to the Cotswolds]. It’s beautiful everywhere you look… it’s like driving through a series of English landscape paintings.”
On writing over 160 books: “I think there’s more than that, but I forget how many. Now I’m pushing eighty, I really would like to write just one book a year. That would be luxury… or would it? Would I just fart around and do it at the last minute?”
On being a writer: “I think of myself more of an escape artist than a writer. The moment people hear the word writer, they start thinking of the Booker Prize and the literary world and ‘the Great Novel’. Well, you can’t write beyond your capabilities… you can’t pretend at another kind of writing. “I had a friend in Paris who said: “You’ve got a very good literary background – why don’t you try writing something different.” He meant better. And I said: “You don’t get it. This might be very light and frivolous and easy to read but I’m writing to my very best – really, my very best.” “Funnily enough, you can’t write in another genre just because it happens to be popular, or you become childish. I once tried to write a Scottish historical. It was dreadful. “I’m often damned as being cosy. I don’t mind so long as people still like [the books], but it’s a bit patronising. It reminds me of Terry Pratchett’s famous remark, when he was asked to speak at festivals, in the way I am, that there often seems to be a subtext that says “of course I don’t read your books but my gardener’s son simply adores them,” and you try not to spit on the stage!”
I think there’s more than that, but I forget how many. Now I’m pushing eighty, I really would like to write just one book a year. That would be luxury… or would it?
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COTSWOLD HOMES MAGAZINE
On Scottish writers: “Of course, sex and drugs does have its place. The black humour of the sort that you get from Stuart McBride is very funny. Val McDermid [is] a frighteningly intelligent woman. And there’s Alexander McCall Smith, Ian Rankin… so many great writers from Scotland [laughs]. Of course, a lot of us started with our admiration for Robert Louis Stevenson’s Kidnapped. What a wonderful, exciting piece of writing.”
On flawed detectives: “The actress who plays Saga in The Bridge is brilliant – a sort of Asperger’s James Bond, almost invulnerable… But it got soppy! You see her background! I don’t want to see her background – I loved Columbo because you never saw Mrs Columbo. And Cagney and Lacey died a bit over a drunken father and a stupid unemployed husband… You don’t want too much of their private lives. “The idiots who were filming my Hamish Macbeth – well, in my opinion they were idiots – they said “We must bring out his dark side.” To which I said: “He hasn’t got one.” They said: “He isn’t married.” I said: “You don’t get married until you’re about 40 in the Highlands.” And Robert Carlyle insisted that Hamish smoke pot – he said if the pot smoking was taken out then he would leave the series. “Agatha’s problems are human. She drinks a bit – well, socially, she drinks a lot – but she’s not an alcoholic!”
On the process of writing: “Somebody asked me once: “How do you target your readers?” You can’t target them. If you start targeting them, you’re dead. Sit down, begin at the beginning and go on to the end. “You have to write what you enjoy. The brain is like a computer: you can only get out what you put in. The essence of storytelling is often forgotten… You’re talking to the reader. You’ve got to grab their attention. You don’t want them to get bored. “Readers have got to be amused, got to be taken out of themselves. I think, for me, a detective story is a bit of P.G. Wodehouse, a bit of romance and a bit of a crossword puzzle.”
Find out more about M.C. Beaton at www.mcbeaton.com