Chris Riddell is an illustrator, author of children’s books and a political cartoonist. From 2015 to 2017, he was the Children’s Laureate, and he has won three Greenaway Medals for his work – more than any other illustrator.
He was born in 1962 in Cape Town, South Africa, where his parents were both anti-apartheid activists. They moved to the UK when Chris was a year old. He grew up first in rural England, and later in south London where his father, a vicar, became chaplain of Brixton Prison.
He started drawing as a young boy when he was given paper and pencils by his mother to keep him quiet during his father’s sermons. After school, he studied illustration under Raymond Briggs at Brighton Polytechnic and received his first commission while still at art school. As a writer his work ranges from picture books to chapter book series including Ottoline and Goth Girl, and as an illustrator he has frequently collaborated with authors such as Paul Stewart and Neil Gaiman.
He started as a political cartoonist in the late 1980s and has drawn the Observer’s weekly cartoon since 1995, celebrating 25 years at the paper this year. As Children's Laureate, he encouraged children to draw, and championed the importance of school libraries and librarians.
Chris is married to Jo, a fellow illustrator and printmaker, with whom he has three grown-up children, among them Katy, another illustrator.
DISC ONE: Fantasia on a Theme of Thomas Tallis, composed by Ralph Vaughan Williams, conducted by Sir John Barbirolli, performed by Sinfonia of London
DISC TWO: The Funeral: September 25, 1977 (Nkosi Sikelel' iAfrika) by Thuli Dumakude
DISC THREE: Smoke Signals by Phoebe Bridgers
DISC FOUR: Final Day by Young Marble Giants
DISC FIVE: Suzanne by Leonard Cohen
DISC SIX: Horace in Brighton by Bird in the Belly
DISC SEVEN: Klarinettenkonzert A-Dur K. 622 - 2. Adagio - I. Allegro. Composed by Mozart, directed by János Rolla, performed by Kálmán Berkes (clarinet) and Liszt Ferenc Chamber Orchestra, Budapest
DISC EIGHT: Tabula rasa: II. Silentium composed by Arvo Pärt, conducted by Paavo Järvi, performed by Viktoria Mullova (violin) and Estonian National Symphony Orchestra
BOOK CHOICE: Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Alice Through the Looking Glass, with the Tenniel illustrations.
LUXURY ITEM: Sketchbooks and pens
CASTAWAY'S FAVOURITE: Fantasia on a Theme of Thomas Tallis, composed by Ralph Vaughan Williams, conducted by Sir John Barbirolli, performed by Sinfonia of London
Presenter: Lauren Laverne
Producer: Cathy Drysdale
This is an unofficial transcript meant for reference. Accuracy is not guaranteed.
Previously sounds music. Radio broadcasts, hello, I'm Lorna van and this is the desert island discs. Podcast. Every week I ask my guest to choose the eight tracks book and luxury they want to take with them if they were cast away to a desert island
rights reasons? The music is shorter than the original broadcast.
I hope you enjoy listening.
my
has two way this week is the illustrator and author chris redoubt over the past thirty five years,
entire worlds have sprung from his fertile imagination via the nape of his pen of formats.
turns laureates. He has many
to his own name, including the gulf girl and utterly series and his innocence
didn't many more winning the prestigious greenaway metal an unprecedented three times as if all that wasn't enough, he both two seconds
successful career. As a political cartoonist he's been putting,
politicians into dustbins and occasionally not peace for the observer. Since nineteen ninety five and creating monthly coverage for the literary review for over twenty years, you MIKE
ass. It is creative energy by taking a glance at his work, which is all
and highly detailed bursting with life and personality. He says I do think of joy
as a verb rather than a noun. I never feel when I drew
that the end result is the important thing. It's the doing. The activity of drawing I dont think I ever stop Chris or delaware.
Come to desert island discs? Delighted to be here. Thank you for joining us
Drawing is like love, then chris verb going now tell me about that. Well, I can't stop Lorna,
What that says about me, but what am I
oh earliest, memories was of drawing on my father's study wall in this
create locrian, wax grand and then getting into town.
trouble when he came back and found the scribbles all over his war and my mom went off and got a great big pack, a paper from illegal paper mill, and she just sent me this paper and I, when I needed it, you know, which was often- and now I keep a sketchbook with me at all times- is going to be a lot to unpack here today. Recently we have already had you know, drawing
transgress have acted in a need for going to begin to all of us, so you never without sketchbook. Then what's the joy of drawing for you, I think it's, it's a relaxing.
It's almost like a meditation,
I will start from a blank sheet of paper and I will draw something without thinking and that will lead to another decision and another decision before I never on drawing
a ship wrecked sailor in the arms of a mermaid, all I'm drawing an impossibly floating rock with a city on top of it. But one of the lovely things about sketchbook is that it's your own personal space. You said you hate the idea of not join what happens when you can't well, I find
a war and start talking on it. Obviously I have another career has bank see, but but don't tell anyone, but now I think any way to make marks. So give me a beach with a stick. I'll spend
many happy afternoons on a desert island drawing in the sand. I'm not really want
If the tide comes in a washes away that doesn't matter, olive had fun drawing. So you brought your sketch, but with you today, and you know
Have a pen in your hand, are you gonna be illustrating sketching as we go? I would love to
music for me is a lovely accompaniment to the way I work anyway. So I'll have the radio on, in my studio, often radio, three sometimes ready for and I draw with music in the background music gives me images and some of the choices made of being tracks that I just love drawing
well, in that case chris, I think we will post what you draw on
for social media accounts, so that list is can
see how your tracks have inspired you. I think that would be a dive into the music. Shall we chris absolutely tell us about it. First choice, mrs one of my favorite tracks,
to draw to its own williams,
taser on the theme of thomas talus, and I think I first heard this
as an island discs, it could have been jenny.
I'm not sure, but this be
Useful music came tumbling over there,
and subsequently
and I listen to it. I just love to draw this wonderful, arcadian landscape. The music suggests to me.
part of fantasia on a theme of thomas talus, composed by re, formed williams, performed by sinfonia of london conducted by such
barber, Rowley and chosen Chris
to help my journey arbiter in nineteen. Eighty two and jews castaway on this programme to be listening is an a young student. Epaulettes
in the here and now for a little longer, Chrissy weren't children's laureate from twenty fifteen to twenty seventeen after Marie black men- and you said at the time I want to put the joy of creativity of drawing every day at the hall.
of my term as laureate now we know why its vital for you to draw, but what he believed that drawing gives chill
or indeed the rest of us. I think
It's one of those wonderful, creative things that one can do that doesnt really rely on technique, snot like playing a violin. Anyone can pick up by rail a pencil
and they can draw on. I think children have an innate grasp of that and then its wolf educated out of them,
while they get with certain point may decide to control. I think that such a shade man, I think part of my
The remit, as children's laureate was to transit. Push through that I'd. Ask in it
you draw not often get people going. I know how to draw table. Could you pick up dispense?
that makes marks on this paper. Ned look at me quizzically and then they would make an old mark, and then I profess huge astonishment and delight bismarck lip had made.
Could you make another one and another one?
for long me, another created doodle of some sort and nazi look your drawing. This is wonderful, don't stop what is,
that stops us, why we inhibited deasey. I think we compare what we do with.
With things we see in the world around us, we live in a visual world and often if we can't drops perfectly our version of homer simpson, we give up
I love the awkward and the inadvertent tyler drawings and on quite right you often go back to their knees.
Work of some a younger red is for inspiration. Don't you? Yes, I have a wall in my studio where I pin up drawings that that my reader send me an there. So,
wonderfully imaginative and free. So I think it's good as and an old continents to be referred.
She might have seen children's heart. What's the starting point feel books, as opposed he'll illustrations,
I will have a sketchbook at all times and then every so often I want to know
The story behind something I've drawn quite inadvertently, is always figurative with you know.
what sometimes it can be a landscape. Sometimes it can be just an era of shading that suggest something.
Mr Monroe, who is a character from my utterly books, he is small and harry and comes from a bug in Norway. I didn't notice when I first drew him. He was simply a curtain of hair with too little eyes looking through it, and I drew this character mental now I must tell a story about him who easy what's come from? Why does he look like
it's time for a second disk chris. What's he gonna be in and why the chosen it? This is really the backdrop to my childhood. My parents were born in south africa, grew up in south africa,
I was born in cape town. I left when I was a year old. My parents were both active in the anti apartheid movement and this
he's kozy sikelel'I africa, which always brings a lump to my throat. When I hear it, I think of my parents, I think of my brother rick, who founded on I six hundred and seventy is again and
he learned the lyrics to this. He could sing this, and so this really useful reckon for my parents.
conseil sickening africa from the original sand track to the film cry: freedom conducted by george fenton, so chris radio that sketch out that early self portrait,
You are an author illustrator, of course, Chris. How important was reading team as a child reading was difficult at the beginning. I remember struck
I didn't have stopped reading at the age of three and I would still battling at school with reading, and I had two comrades to help me Peter
jane series of books that teach kids have to eat yes and patient jane had all sorts of adventures that work codifies full rita's like me, so one a patron,
would be playing in the garden and book to be. They would me maybe making wigwam and having tee with Mummy they all work was was luminous.
full and I loved it bought patrons. I never seem to be very interesting things and I struggled and then one day I went into an adjacent classroom and I found this extraordinary mythical book. It was patron, jane, twelve see the very top of the reading pyramid
and I thought, if you haven't climb all the way up to twelve see. I lived on this very difficult task
of learning to read and then I need never be another book again be free and then out of core of my I saw another book, it was called acquitaine, saxon, the jew fees and it had an illustrated covered by Quentin blake. I didn't know who Clinton was at the time, but I looked at this and he was mesmerizing. I thought I want to know what
That story it's about. I get in sex. Is a swedish detective stones lay yes, who has a bloodhound whose very fond of queen cakes and I'd about this, but I didn't
the scandal of the words, but I borrowed it, took it away loved it and after not patient, jane with debt to me, but I,
think I spent most my adolescents in my bedroom, painting model soldiers and
doing this thing. I love sort of red rover tickets on wrecked buses way, could travel all live london and allow
I was meant to be doing games. I would abscond the minute. The gangs monster gone off to sort of organise other things hot absconding get across the river to the tight gallery crisis time,
to go to the music. It's your third today wisely chosen this will. This is buying.
American sing, a song writer called Phoebe bridges and I was browsing youtube emma and I heard her first album, which was called stranger in the alps and unlocked the lyrics, and then I found
Sl king to the bologna book, fair in italy, and I was listening to
this- and I was drawing- and I looked up-
at the window and therewith the alps below me and so on,
drawing to a stranger in the alps once flying over the out
I, when I arrived, I just did a little posed to the drawing our doings hang. You know who the thought has flying the alps. Drawing to this end,
he sent me a message on instagram, so we connected and then
little. While later I found myself at a large venue.
Illustrating live while phoebean, her band sang, which was an extraordinary experience.
We see these
Just two ways
singing. I suspect me nothing's changed sleep. Phoebe
just with smoke signals. So Chris rebellion moved around quite a lot when you were a child. That kind of disruption can be tricky for children to manage. How did it work with you? How did you manage
going from school to school and friend group to friend grape. My father was moved.
Industry in many different places and became a prison chaplain and later chaplain and psychiatric hospital. Each time we made these big moves across the country. My pants with gathers together the kids together
say dance going to become a prison chaplain Melina we prayed about. Mrs. We feel the right thing and we get here. That's fine, because there was this higher power that ordained this. But what I learned I think very early on in my school career was to try blend in when at my secondary school. I remember my advocates might sort of second school
I would add good grades old way through. There was nothing to worry about, except that is common to the end. When my teacher said christmas, disturbingly quiet, while I thought I'd blending,
it's interesting that you ve gone on to have such a public facing life and roll and career, and you created voice is kind of
carried you around the world I learned from my child. Can I tell you, as a young man, I was painfully shy and I remember being completely mortified the first time I had to speak to my readers, who were room.
in a class of lovely birmingham, school kids and I just on a book about a bear on a picnic and in a complete panic. I illustrated the entire book in real time in front of these source right kid
it was a very in I found. I found any such public speaking a real challenge, and luckily, when I first started working that wasn't something we have to do is
Let me illustrate a thing: catalan in mauritania are completely yes
myself into it. Tell me about the job be took him before he went to arts
oh you're sixteen and you ve described as the best job I've ever had. Oh, my god, it was a jump at
I local library- and I got to do that wonderful thing of stamping books. I love doing that asking for overdue finds. That was great, but my favorite thing was stacking. The shells because I could get this great big trolley, allude them up with books and then disappear.
aaron into the book stacks and find a comfortable corner and regal afternoon it was fantastic. I think my red mountain peaks gorman gassed at cool stuff.
Library in the corner, when I should have been stocking shells, was that an important but free hugely, not least because I was actually living in golden gas at the time of the hill I lifted the grounds of greenhill psychiatric hospital enough. It looks remarkably like one of your illustrations. It.
labyrinthine place since close down, but my father was the chaplain ma. Am we lived in the ground?
we could wander around. I've made friends with the many of the patients and subsequently ass. A student went back to work during the summer's on the wolves and it was an extraordinary
place. Do you think it's had an impact on you as an artist creatively to you see those experiences in those ideas in your work? I think, inevitably, I draw
from my imagination, but I think I've always been one of his people who looks at thing
now. I see that my daughter as well, who is ultimately straighter but katy when she was little always looked at things. Feed scrutinise things didn't say too much, but looked at things now. That's what I used to do my mother tells me so I've always been an observer
nonsense and I suppose, and experience of wandering round came hill was a chance ready to observe, I think, all sorts of things, and it was undoubtedly every so gothic environment tat. Your next piece of music, Chris, what's gonna be a ban, but I loved as an art students. They come from wales. They called young marble giants and this is a track.
the final day- and the reason I chose it is it reminds me of my time- is not student in brighton in the eighties and also my tutor Brighton
The wonderful raymond breaks b.
Maybe your mobile giants with final day, so chris redoubt check, taking you back to your out, schooldays in brighton you described deciding to pursue art, is the most transgresseth thing you'd ever done. Why was that
I was some get into English was an academic subject and it was
feeling of running away in a felt wonderful. I felt like a rebel and going off to this wonderful
I'll, exciting place called at school and running away from what I suppose, a future life where I would have either become an academic, possibly a very frustrated account
and maybe something in the civil service, and instead I threw myself into this quixotic thing of being at all.
Didn't see, you started off, adapts and then transferred to brighten polly way, as you mentioned, you studied with raymond briggs. Tell us a bit more about life with him. As a teacher,
raymond is an extraordinary artist and mental
Why haven't great teachers leave a trail of lives? They ve changed profound,
we are always remember a tutorial. What he went through some of my were me said a few salient things. Many just sent dump marvellous marvellous and I just floated out of the tube
on our thinking, raymond break said, I was marvellous, this extraordinary environment,
arriving for my weekly tutorial lifted early and there was another students in that.
An raymond was doing exactly the same thing would looking through the work and then every twopence hang marvellous. Marvellous, I remember thinking I don't care alto
That would breyman, says malthus. There's another marvellous student here, that's all right as well. You said that raven breaks was one
those people who changed lives. Did he changes profoundly. I
Remember reading when the wind blows and thinking while this is something I
to do and then seeing raymond studio unthinking. I want to work in a state of at the bottom of my garden one day so
Raymond was an inspiring figure and when I got my very first commission
I went into a publishes, an I showed them my drawings and this wonderful man could cause fluke looked at my artwork and set them. I can see you draw perfectly well, and I said:
Raymond bricks taught me a nice, ah, yes, yes and then sent but
your stories and I
Well, I don't have any stories. I want we list for it. You know I'm day I found myself saying in that way you do when the dogs eaten your homework. I sit. I caught a story, but I lifted at home. He said: go back home
in this story of yours. Bring it into me tomorrow, and I am speaking this lightly with workers. Casket, wonderful german accent, and so I just felt compelled to use
bringing the story tomorrow and
I went home and in applying panic, wrote a story and I didn't think I could write. That's not what I wanted to do, but I wrote to the store. I brought it in
next day showed it to cloud cease. Mrs buffet, fine, I will publish it
I'm getting on the train to brighten immediately afterwards,
seeking out raymond that left brightened by that time and saying what do I do now needed?
calmly and gently took me through the processes. I would now need to do to illustrate this.
say he was an immense influence on me. Chris, it's time
go to the music what's next week. This is my wife, Joe. We matter tat bright, not school, and I was
going through one of my reinvention suarez deciding, instead of being painfully shire, pretend to be gregarious and outgoing wasn't good. Generally thought has completed it.
Then half way through the second year. We found ourselves at club together and things seem to go much better and then
Joe, had a commission doing a mural in a rather smarts flatten kensington in london.
I remember valentines night- she invited me up. Could she have the keys to work on the mural? The
of the house being in the country say sir, would you like to come up and stay over vienna was vanity
night, and so I did I admire her mural and then we sat on the sofa and play the records they had miss in making flat and we put on
this track, this was the track. We fell in love to it
by the wonderful leonard Cohen and its suzanne zu tag to less near the river
You can hear the boats go by and you can spend the night beside, and you know that she's half crazy, but that's why
you wanna, be then,
didn t come away, and when you
I have then she gets
Leonard Cohen, which season chris retail, your dream,
when you were studying under raymond. Briggs was to have a studio at the bottom of the garden just like he did, and you do
you live with Joe, whose also an artist I am living. The dream you share, a studio with your daughter is well open at the moment. Yes, katie's, graduated armies,
now working on children's books as well, who default adena how that happened. Yes, I now show
see David katy witches interesting, very judgmental, child labour.
Did I mean over and say sure by that? Well I seek that. Often it's great being at the bottom of the garden is a lovely thing, and so I walk out of my kitchen dumb, the guy
path and there the trees at the bottom, my garden suit. The state itself is screened. It's an old coachhouse sack and walked out my garden path through the fit the trees into my studio.
Your visual style is extremely distinctive. How long did that take to co? Here, I think with
about a style- and I say this to students duncan looking for style astound should find you. It is about
trying to observe and put yourself in as many different places as possible and then
seeing wow that informed your style
While you will find that unit unicorns your thing and you become the unicorn guy, I mean it does happen to feed your artistic hinterland. That's important! Absolutely until we live in an extraordinary h now, where we have social media full,
of images and where we can sample and look
so many amazing things and be inspired by them. Chris, we're gonna go to the music, what
next amoy well loose
is my other korea, where I draw with this extraordinary machine colder visualized in public to music? What's the attraction of doing, I think it's listening to the music and being able to drive. I do it on my own
sometimes just for fun, sometimes a postal, instagram films, and so I do a little thing at my local folk club, which is at this amazing toy museum in brighton and they have folk acts who play. I set up my screen and my visualize or my project. While bands play am I I illustrate the songs as they sing, and the next track is by a wonderful folk, collective called bird in the belly they play beautiful
They are fine, if I think in the collective young musicians want really drew me to them, is that they find materials. The poems poetry proves that they can then set to music so again to hear a nineteenth century poem
all about a dandy who goes down to brighten to take me out, and it's called horace in Brighton. Now,
and left the slide
muslims lies
the dry sainz revisit oceans and seas
sounds good night,
it is nonsense to pick up
in south sudan
I just want to remove this guy mundane rings for dies.
bed in the belly and horace in brighton, creasy vat, lots of high
successful long running, creative partnerships across your career. You, britain, the edge chronicles with Paul stewards, new, illustrated numerous books, amphora neil game and how important is trust in that relationship between author and illustrator. I think it's at the heart of any collaboration.
I think it's knowing when to intervene when not too- and I think we talked about how I
even the least rated mustn't get in the way of words. I too, I believe in the primacy of the text. That's where the
our is men as an illustration. I've got to interpret that in a way without getting in front of it and both with pull anneal. There seems to be that balance that we achieve as an illustrate what one mustn't do is be too prescriptive. This is this of art of illustration, not being overly disk.
To try and evoke, rather than describe you believe too? That stories have to be spoken rather than red. Why is that? Well, I think certain children's books- these are books for sharing, and I think hearing a swell
I'd. Love is a very particular experience. I remember taking in a text of mine to my publishes, walk books. I went in and gave my picturebook text to my editor. Wonderful, medical, David lloyd is a complete doin of children's books and David climbed. Up onto the tape
uncalled for quiet in the open plan office and read my story to everyone. While I just shrank beneath the table in
extreme embarrassment and it taught me
a good lesson, which is I can't write
my stories by candlelight in the quiet of my studio, the bottom, my garden expecting hushed or when they grow, they got to be read out loud. They ve got it
Would it be communicated so when one right sounds, maybe, as we draw in each show people any to see it, you need to gauge reaction from it. Chris we're gonna go to the music again at your penultimate. Disk can tell us about this one, mrs Mozart,
adagio, promotes clarinet concerto in a and it was my father's favorites piece of music. He had this wonderful parenting style which
think I describe as benign neglect. It was never quite sure what we were up to what we were doing and that never seem to matter. So we never had judgments.
stop us. We were allowed to do what we felt we should do. He never expected us to conform in any sense.
He was a wonderful, wonderful embodiment of visit of anglican approach to life,
part of the adagio for mozart's clarinet concerto in a major performed by the least ferrets chamber oak, a strap budapest with common,
their cash on clarinet, conducted by young,
thrown up chris vigilance- that was your father
favorite, piece of music and a new paid that at his funeral we ve talked a lot about the joyful creative release and potential of drawing. But do you find it just as beneficial jew?
hard times you mean alongside you, agree, feel father. Did you have a creative response to that and other losses that you ve experienced in your life? Yes, I think, because I e
think of drawing very much and and creating art often has a therapeutic value, and we know that it can help to externalize feelings and thoughts. It can make us feel mindful will calmness and I think, being able to to draw something when you're feeling a certain
I cannot allow you to release those feelings on unemployment. Rather banal knows when I do something ridiculous and feel rather silly about something. If I draw myself doing that exact same thing, with a look
caption it makes me feel better. You know so I m takes this thing at it does. Rather because your illustrating your own life and being able to editor relies ass. I came now the hero of my own misfortune, so I can feel slightly better about his you'd, be near observe as political cartoonist for twenty five years, and even
scribe the job as weekly catharsis. What's your process, I wonder. Oh, my goodness. Will it stops me shouting at the radio, often not because the radio coverage isn't excellent, but because drawing a political,
in his away also visualizing my own thoughts and ideas, and sometimes it feels good to draw donald trump in unhappy tat, your final disk, Chris retail. What can it be? Well this
Peace is perfect taxi drawn whatever is in one's mind, mrs such evocative. Peace sits by other pert thea, one
full composer of sometimes.
so sacred music and those an element of the sacred about this peace. It's cold so lend him.
And it has this wonderful de tuned piano that is so spooky it. Doom laden in some sense,
is, but there is also something very soothing in calming about it.
Part of ceylon gm from tabular rostov, composed by, although pet, before
by the estonian national symphony orchestra with victoria
on violin, conducted by powerful yogi Chris Fidel it's time to costume
then, on your desert island. How do you picture tat? Would you draw it? I wonder, as a cartoonist dominated
it is this solitary crag with possibly a palm tree sticking up from the middle
be sitting there with some amusing placard around my neck, but I'm thinking more the tropical paradise them
scottish crag somewhere in me, the island's, ok, I would spend my
I'm so wearing a humorous, cowskin hat and sporting any more impressive beard than I have at the moment. Is there anything I would be happy to leave behind deadline
I see this as an extended sabbatical will give you the books to take with you, of course, the bible, the complete works of shakespeare, and
that you can choose what would you like? I think it's gotta be Alice.
his adventures in wonderland through the looking glass and what Alice found that supposed to, I think with the original tunnel and will do what I would like this is where it becomes complicated. I would like every illustration.
That's ever been done to either version bound in Elvis
I mean they are so numerous. What about? If we gave you the most
beautiful original edition of the tunnel. I could live with. Ok, we can
So a few a luxury item: two: may your stay more enjoyable origin like oh, that's, easy lots and lots of sketchbooks, obviously with pens to go with them. Sir, I can illustrate the bible I can illustrate.
Shakespeare, and then I can move onto illustrating Alice in wonderland all over again when I'm completely surprised by that request, but delighted to grant it finally, which of these eight tracks. Would you
risk life and limb to save? If the surf was threatening to wash the motorway, it has to be anti desire on the theme of thomas talus, because it'll make me homesick it'll. Take me to another place, ideal track to draw to as well.
Chris retail. Thank you very much for sharing your desire discs with us. Thank you
I saw enjoy talking to greece and the pictures that he drew inspired by his tracks are beautiful and you'll be able to see those drawings on the radio for website. There are numerous children's authors in the desert. Island discs back catalogue, including Judith car Michael rose and Judy Donaldson, roald dahl and philip pullman, also featured in our archive, is Chris his mental and teacher it out college raymond briggs and his predecessor as children's laureate mallory black man. She was castaway by kirsty young in twenty thirteen kirsty ass molly. If she'd been encouraged to write in school, I never got discouraged from doing it, and some of them are quite. Are you if you like
so we can go in a milk- will come to give you feed back. So I've always had wonderful english teachers in class. We encourage to come up to the front and read them out. I wrote a poem when I was in my doing is school a call. The jungle
I remember the last two lines. There wasn't particularly good, but my teacher lighted- and she said- oh, madam, you can read this parents evening and she's, got me to the front of the costs and said: okay read it out then, and I stood then I wouldn't say words go anatomy, and I said I
and she said well. Why not, myself, I'm sure I've ever thought laughing. I thought I'm never going to write another again, but luckily I got over it, but it was a vessel horror story and I love writing, but I didn't I didn't want to share my stuff, but it was the same and I started writing and I joined a ways into writing class
Am I to tell said to me I would never read my stuff out you'd go round. Of course women and she say: ok when it got me say manner, we do want to read your work and I'd say no! Thank you not this week and every week it was no thank you not this week and after term in a harsh, you got fed up with me and just look me in the eye and said manner. We do want to be a writer, and I said more than anything else in the world, and yet it will, then you can have to shut off the port love and allow everyone crocodile loving. I may very kind of figured it was funny, but failing absolutely mortified, but it was the best piece of advice that ever received. My life was it's one of those things about. If you wanna do something go for it: mallory blackmail, speaking to cast a young twenty thirteen dont forget
over two thousand editions of the programme available on BBC sounds happiness me next time. My guest will be an actor whose korea began playing a hero of children's literature. Daniel ratcliff do join us, then
hello. It's me great jennifer plugs funding these people cassio debt. To me, I've got good news. We back for a second series. Historians comedians alike will join me in learning things about well Mary shelly. Coming up with doing a lot of appetite, we do in the history of chocolate point us in the bbc sounds apple wherever you get your pockets and you'll be able to hear shopkeeper sandy quibble with the rules in the ancient greek olympic. You couldn't bite anyone words busted gorge, there always are well. That's a syllable such for your debts me on the bbc, sounds
Transcript generated on 2022-06-08.