September 15, 2025 • 57 mins
As a podcast that's had the honour of interviewing everyone from New York Times best-sellers to indie authors and celebrities — and recently ranked number 3 in the UK's top writing podcasts — we always aim to bring you the very best. This episode was no exception.We were beyond thrilled and honoured to welcome a true British icon to the show: the one and only Sir Tony Robinson.A New Chapter for a National TreasureKnown worldwide for his unforgettable role as the cunning Baldrick in Blackadder and as the beloved host of the long-running archaeology series Time Team, Sir Tony Robinson has entertained generations. Now, at the age of 79, he has embarked on a bold new journey: the publication of his debut adult fiction novel, The House of Wolf.In this exclusive interview, we sat down with Sir Tony to discuss his extraordinary career, which spans stage, screen, and page. He shared insights on the transition from writing his award-winning children’s books to crafting a sweeping historical novel for adults. We also explored how writing has always been at the very heart of his storytelling, a constant thread throughout his diverse and celebrated career.The House of WolfThe House of Wolf — described as “earthy, entertaining, and gloriously inventive” — is set against the tumultuous backdrop of the French Revolution. The novel masterfully blends themes of passion, survival, and gripping drama, promising a rich and immersive experience for readers.This book marks the beginning of an exciting new historical fiction series from one of Britain’s most loved cultural figures.Inspiration for Every WriterWhether you're a long-time fan of British comedy, a history enthusiast, a lover of archaeology, or simply a writer looking for excellent advice and motivation, this conversation is an absolute must-watch.Sir Tony Robinson’s journey is a powerful reminder that it's never too late to start a new creative endeavour, and that the best stories are often born from a lifetime of experience.Watch or ListenYou can now watch the full interview on YouTube:👉 Watch hereOr listen on your favourite podcast platform by searching The Writing Community Chat Show.Support the ShowThe Writing Community Chat Show is now a registered CIC (non-profit) dedicated to supporting authors, readers, and creatives. If you’d like to help us keep the show running — and growing — you can support us here:👉 Support us on PayPalEvery contribution, big or small, helps cover our running costs and allows us to continue bringing you interviews with the writers and cultural icons you love.💬 What did you think of The House of Wolf launch and Tony’s reflections on his career? We’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments. And if you enjoyed this interview, please share it with a friend and subscribe so more people can discover the show.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Hello, and welcome to the Writing Community Chat show. Hello everybody.
Speaker 2 (00:15):
I am super excited for today's show. We hope you've
had a great week, and I hope you're ready to
settle in and watch this because it's going to be
a great one.
Speaker 1 (00:24):
Chris, how are you doing. How's your week been?
Speaker 3 (00:27):
Yeah, very excited and obviously to do this show a
little bit different from how we usually do it. This
is not going out live, this is being pre recorded.
But that's fantastic because it means we get to bring
an exclusive interview when today's guest book comes out, so
that's very exciting times.
Speaker 2 (00:47):
Yes, and it does take away from from the kind
of week we both had because You've had a terrible injury.
I've got you know, Niglin back, getting too our middle ages,
and I've had a car blowout incident and all sorts
of stuff.
Speaker 1 (00:58):
So it's been a bit of a hectic week.
Speaker 2 (01:00):
But we're tuning it into ending it in a great
way with a great interview. So yeah, I'm glad we're
at the end of it.
Speaker 1 (01:07):
Chris.
Speaker 3 (01:08):
Yeah, and a second sir that we've had on the show,
so we've had sur Ian Rankin on the show and
now we've got another sir, so you know, maybe we
go for a hat trick of stirs at some point,
but tonight he's a fantastic guest and really looking forward
to chat too.
Speaker 1 (01:23):
Yes, absolutely, I'm not sure who what other says there
are that.
Speaker 2 (01:26):
We could get on, but I'm sure there are plenty
of them, although it's very, very exceptional for us to
have too, So we're very honored with that in mind, Chris,
I'll get tonight's guest on and we'll dig into the
background of this character, add characters and of course this
new journey into novel writing, so let me get started
on that. So we're absolutely delighted to welcome Sir Tony
(01:50):
Robinson to the Writing Committy Chat Show. So Tony is
one of Britain's best love entertainers. A master storyteller and
award winning writer, he's famous for creating the iconic character
Boldrick from the classic PBC comedy Blackadder and for presenting
twenty seasons of Channels four archaeology series Time Team. He's
a true household name with a career spanning decades on
(02:11):
stage and screen. He's an actor, comedian, presenter and author
who has won multiple awards including Bafter and RTS Awards
for his work. In twenty thirteen, Sir Tony Awarded was
awarded and knighted for his contributions to drama and charity.
And it's not every day we get to chat to
a cultural icon and of course a knight of the realm.
(02:32):
Now Tony is adding yet another chapter to his remarkable career,
making his adult fiction debut with a brand new novel,
The House of Wolf. And today The House of Wolf launches,
so huge, congratulations and we can't wait to delve into
the backstory behind the book and Tony's journey to becoming
a novelist. Please welcome Tony Robertson. Hello Tony, he right.
Speaker 4 (02:54):
Great, what a great opening.
Speaker 1 (02:57):
Thank you so much.
Speaker 2 (02:59):
Honestly, we are so excited to have you on the
show and you are remarkable in your career, so thank
you so much for joining us.
Speaker 5 (03:05):
How are you doing really really well. It's I've been
over in Spain for.
Speaker 4 (03:11):
Most of the summer.
Speaker 5 (03:12):
I'm actually there now, although I'm supposed to be back
in England for the launch, and it's been extraordinarily hot,
as you know. But it's funny this moment when you
finish writing a book and you just passed over to
the publisher. Suddenly all that energy that's been going round
(03:32):
your head result as it took to write the book,
particularly all the energy that went into getting it delivered
on time and oh my god, a mistake on page
three hundred and eighty. All that stuff it suddenly disappears,
and it's like it's like you've been thrown out of
a plane and you don't know whether there's a parachute
(03:52):
or not, but you're just going. And that's really like
my summary has been most writers. My daughter, who is
a very well known writer too, she said, most writers
go mad between the moment they deliver the book and
the moment it gets published.
Speaker 4 (04:12):
That's certainly been my case.
Speaker 2 (04:15):
Yeah, we have had the pleasure of interviewing Laura at
your daughter.
Speaker 4 (04:19):
Oh how do you I didn't know that.
Speaker 2 (04:20):
Yes, crimeris festival. We've met her twice and she is fantastic.
So yeah, it's amazing to see that that, you know,
creativity runs in the family.
Speaker 5 (04:30):
Yes, it's funny that I don't really know what that's about.
It's sort of I stood over her with a sharp
stick making a hand move across the place.
Speaker 2 (04:43):
Yeah, so your career, you know, is you've gone from
drama school, into drama, into presenting in comedy and all
those great things. At what point did you kind of
realize writing was the nagging in the back of your
brain because you've written over thirty thirty children's books as well.
Speaker 5 (04:59):
Yes, I an awful lot of writing, sort of without
realizing I was writing, certainly not thinking that I was
a writer. Virtually all the writing I've done has been
towards an end, which is not necessarily the book, so that,
(05:20):
for instance, when I trained to be a theater director,
I was writing program notes. I was writing notes all
day for my actors. When I was writing comedy shows
to be directed on Stasia, I was writing all the
links that were required, and then I would be writing
some sketches those kinds. But the word a writer never
(05:43):
crossed my mind. Even when I was working as a
children's theater director at what's now called the MAC in Birmingham,
the Middleton's Arts Center. It had its own professional theater company,
and I had a director's bursary to train as director
in the late sixties, and I was writing children's plays.
(06:05):
But I never really thought of myself as a playwright
or as a writer. It was just kind of part
of what I was doing, that great sort of swirl
of things that wanted every day. And I don't know,
I think maybe I stopped when we were doing Blackadder.
(06:30):
I started writing children's books. There's another story there were
can talk to about another time, but it was at
the time when my children were young. So writing the
children's books was driven by the space that I had
in my heart, both for my own kids and also
for the kids that came around all that banter and patter.
I loved all that, I loved being around all that,
(06:51):
and just kind of, you know, started writing into that space.
And I wrote children's books for a long time. Then
I kind of I just stopped because my children got older.
But then I started writing books which were essentially spin
offs of television series that I was doing. So in fact,
(07:13):
I won the Blue Peter Factual Award for The Worst
Children's Jobs in History, which was a spin off of
the television series The Worst Jobs in History that I've
written before. I can't remember what your question was at all,
but it's about this fact that really, until I wrote
(07:34):
The House of Wolf, I hadn't been I had never
had that existential confrontation between a bloke I'm gonna do
this gesture again because I'd write my hand, his pen
and a blank page, which which is now my everyday lot.
Speaker 4 (07:52):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (07:53):
So what difference is it from writing all the experiences
of writing that you've had, so now writing a novel.
Speaker 5 (08:00):
Absolutely completely total And I hadn't realized that would be
the case. When I was writing children's work, as I say,
I was, Ali was driven by the fact that it's
not as though my kids were in the room. I'm
repeating myself a little, I know, but it's I was
(08:20):
writing into the space that I felt when they were
into when they were in the room. And reading back
on the children's authors that I really love from uh
Hans Christian Anderson, the Brothers Grim, Joan Aike In, Dinah
Wynn Jones, role Dat, they all talk about something like
(08:42):
that about when they start work in the morning, occupying
that space. And that's that's how that felt for me.
So I knew, I kind of knew what I was doing.
And then when I was writing all the spin off stuff,
even I was commissioned to write a history of Australia
for for penguin In Australia.
Speaker 4 (09:03):
I knew what the narrative was. It was bloody there.
Speaker 5 (09:06):
I couldn't really, I couldn't alter it. But the thing
you you pitch a novel and then what if you got?
Speaker 2 (09:17):
Absolutely yeah?
Speaker 5 (09:19):
And and really the the terror, the imposter syndrome that
I went have been through for the last few years
was mammoth mammoth.
Speaker 4 (09:30):
And it's such a.
Speaker 5 (09:31):
Relief talking to really senior writers who whose work I
absolutely adore, and they say, oh my god, I feel
that every day I vomit in the louver before us
start working. I'm so terrified because I know this time
I will be revealed as the the sham that I am. Yeah,
(09:51):
I thought it was just me.
Speaker 4 (09:52):
It's crazy.
Speaker 1 (09:53):
It's amazing.
Speaker 2 (09:54):
We've had authors on the show that have had amazing
long careers and best sellers across the board, and you
when they say, at a later stage of their career
they feel that imposter syndrome lurking over them all the time.
Speaker 1 (10:04):
You know it never goes away.
Speaker 5 (10:05):
Yeah, yeah, absolutely, I maybe you need it. I don't know,
but it's certainly there. I'd rather not have it, I
really really would rather. I'll tell you what was really nice.
Speaker 4 (10:21):
From the get go.
Speaker 5 (10:22):
I mean, we can talk about how the book developed,
admit it, But from the get go, my agent was
right behind it and my publisher was right behind us,
and they were saying really, really lovely things to me.
But you know the problem with imposter syndrome is that
someone will say something nice to you and it just
(10:42):
kind of goes yeah when you would say that, wouldn't
you it is actually shit?
Speaker 4 (10:49):
And it wasn't until.
Speaker 5 (10:53):
The my publisher had sent out all the proofs and
the comments started coming back. Suddenly, people whose work I've
always adored, Stephanie Merritt, Dan Jones, Mark Billingham, people were
coming back and saying such incredibly nice things about what
(11:16):
I had written. I can't say it got rid of
the imposter syndrome completely, but suddenly I thought, well, I
was actually prepared to lash out for a party on
the first night. I hadn't been prepared to do up
toil that moment, I thought, oh my god, no one
will come, so that I think that was probably that
(11:40):
was one of the most awful thing to say, isn't
it How one needs one's ego being nurtured?
Speaker 4 (11:46):
But I really did. It was such a I don't
even make my head swell.
Speaker 5 (11:52):
It was just an enormous sense of relief. Hey, if
Steph Merritt likes it, I can go with that.
Speaker 4 (12:00):
I know if everybody else goes boom boom boo.
Speaker 5 (12:02):
Well, I know how wonderful her books are. So she
thinks mine was great.
Speaker 3 (12:07):
Yeah, so, Tony, it sounds like we've you writing. It's
come from a place of obviously, when you're writing children's books,
it was a love with your children and entertaining them.
And then obviously when you're writing with the comedy, that
again is coming from a place of work with How
did that come about in terms of, like you said before,
before we came on a he said, no one kind
of expected you to write a novel. Was this a
(12:29):
real passiony project for you and something that's been in
your mind for a long time?
Speaker 5 (12:34):
An enormous passion project on a number of fronts. I've
always been interested in King Alfred. In fact, Laura and
my daughter, I won't be indelicate enough to tell you
her exact age, but she is at her forties. She
reminds me that when she was eighteen, I actually gave
her two weeks money to research King Alfred for me
for another project I was trying to get off the ground,
(12:55):
which I never did because it just didn't work.
Speaker 4 (12:57):
So he's always been there.
Speaker 5 (12:59):
This third story about Alfred and the cakes, what's that
all about?
Speaker 4 (13:04):
We all remember it, but it's just kind of like gibberish.
Speaker 5 (13:08):
Really, the fact that this arrogant man was so full
of his own shit that he couldn't be bothered to
take notice of this poor old woman's cakes who were
burning on the fire, and then she got really cross
with him.
Speaker 4 (13:23):
That hardly proves that you're going to be a good king.
Speaker 5 (13:26):
Does it. So what was that story about? So that
was always revolving around my head. And the second thing
was he was the youngest of five sons. He was
never meant to be king. He was probably in Rome
for most of his teens. He was probably training for
the church. Suddenly he was thrown into this position of
being a king, and it seems like for the first
(13:47):
few years he was pretty rubbish at it, and then
suddenly the whole thing turns around. He's in athlone five
twenty five square miles or whatever. It was really small.
If you lose that, Wessex falls the whole of what
we now call England falls and we spend up spend
(14:08):
today speaking Danish and eating bacon. You know that that's
what would have happened probably, And yet he turned the
whole thing around. And I've always thought, how did it happen?
Did he do it on his own? He can't have
done it on his own. Who did he do it with?
What were the thoughts that were going on his head?
He didn't just win battles. He transformed the economy, the church,
(14:31):
the legislature, the coinage, kind of everything. And his son
was just as good, and his grandson was just as good.
Three brilliant kings on the trot. You know how often
do we get that in British history. So all of
that was going through me, and then we got to lockdown.
(14:54):
And I know lockdown was terrible for a huge number
of people, and my heart goes out to the people
who had a really terrible time. I have to say
it was wonderful for me. It's a bit shaming, but
it's true because I had always worked, and I'd always
filled every gap in my life with working. Suddenly not
only could I not work, but nobody else was working either,
(15:17):
so I couldn't feel bad about it, and so all
these ideas were buzzing around in my head, and one
of the strongest was, why don't you do what you
have always wanted to do, which is actually create the
story of Alfred. And then I thought, Okay, I wanted
to create the story of Alfred, but this is my Alfred.
(15:37):
I don't want to sit down and go Alfred the
Great was born on blah blah blah blah. When he
was eighteen blah blah blah blah, he fought a battle
that was very fun. You know, we've all known books
like that, and we've all known fictional books which are
actually like that. I mean, I think, to me, Dan
Brown is the epitome of someone who gets a load
(16:01):
of people to do a loads of research for him
and then just knit something a bit vague between the
various bits of research. Sorry, Dan, you know I probably
shouldn't be critical, but it doesn't matter.
Speaker 4 (16:12):
You've made more money than I ever will.
Speaker 5 (16:14):
But anyway, you know, I really hate that kind of book,
and I really hate that kind of history book. I
wanted to write out of everything.
Speaker 4 (16:21):
That I've always cared about. Well, I like.
Speaker 5 (16:26):
Somebody was saying to me, who are the two people
who influenced you most in the writing this book.
Speaker 4 (16:35):
And I said Springsteen and George Elliott.
Speaker 5 (16:42):
And all I mean is all I meant by that
is they've always been in my head. They've always been
They've always been behind whatever it is I create just
a sort of everything is all the experience that I
had when I was on the executive of the nation,
the national executive of the Labor Party, and that was
(17:04):
at the time when there are war was about to happen,
and when it happened, all that being so close to
senior politicians at that moment for someone who's interested in
history was regardless of what one might feel about the outcome,
(17:25):
the sheer mechanics of being around when all that happened
was phenomenal. I've always been interested in Christianity, not as Christian,
but because it is always been the predominant ideology in
Britain for the last two thousand years. How did that work?
(17:45):
What is the inter relationship between ordinary people's lives and
those sets of beliefs, and what happens when those beliefs
go wrong, or what happens when these people who we
call heretics emerge, who might well be really brilliant thinkers,
but thinking so far outside the box that the authorities
(18:06):
feel they need to be burned.
Speaker 4 (18:08):
You know, how does all that happened? What happens when you.
Speaker 5 (18:11):
Are surrounded by what we used to call vikings, what
I call the Norlanders. Your little island is surrounded by
people who you fear if they catch you or you
saw you from there down to between your legs between
there and open you up and just let you right.
Speaker 4 (18:30):
Like kind of every thought.
Speaker 5 (18:32):
I've ever had about Alfred and about the rest of
my life kind of went into that book. As I
suspect it's the case for an awful lot of people
in their first book. I think it. Maybe it's why
the second book is often so problematic, because you've had
all this stuff which needs to be exercised. Now I've
cheated because I'm saying this is the first part of
(18:54):
the trilogy, and so I think all that's stuff that
I've always felt. Well, I know, because I've started working
on the second book, it is still there to be generated.
But so when you say did it come out of love?
It came out of everything I've ever known. If that
does sound too, I know all this sounds a bit wanky,
(19:15):
but it is.
Speaker 4 (19:16):
Actually, it's true. It is actually the mechanism.
Speaker 2 (19:21):
What's interesting is you've traveled a lot in your life
through your for your work and you know obviously pleasure
as well. You've even gone down to the Titanic with
with Cameron. But your novel is situated through a lot
of different places, including Wales. So why why do you
(19:42):
think you've chosen those locations specifically?
Speaker 5 (19:47):
I've always loved sagas since I was a kid. I
think what the first book that stuck with me. It
wasn't The Iliad and the Odyssey, but it was the
children's version of the Iliad and the Obviously it's why
later on I wrote this, He's the greatest hero of
(20:07):
them all.
Speaker 4 (20:07):
It was a sort of.
Speaker 5 (20:09):
It was an homage to how I'd felt about all
those stories when I was young. Once again, I loved
the Biblical stories, not from not from a Christian perspective,
but all those stories about David and Goliath and Soul
and the prophet Samuel and all that stuff. I just
(20:30):
thought that was so great. And later on, when I
saw the first Foresight saga on the television, when I
first started reading Bleak House and realized quite how huge
it was.
Speaker 4 (20:44):
I always loved it.
Speaker 5 (20:45):
And when we got to Netflix, you know, I'm middle aged,
and suddenly every week there is a new saga to watch,
not just a new saga, but a new saga written
by a genius of our, of a of a showrunner,
accompanied by ten extremely well paid, probably equally brilliant writers.
(21:09):
And when I first saw a Game of Thrones, and
but some people were being sneary about it because there's
an awful lot of tips in this and a lot
of violence. Yes, I hardly noticed most of.
Speaker 6 (21:22):
That, because what I could see was just these ideas
pull pull, pull, and Martin was was writing.
Speaker 5 (21:34):
He would just next chapter, Okay, let's write a new country,
let's write a new civilization, and we're going to link
them all together.
Speaker 4 (21:43):
And I've always absolutely adored that.
Speaker 5 (21:45):
And given that what I'm talking about in Game in
interesting I can call my own book Game of Throws,
House of Wolf is is how South Britain came together. Well,
you've got to start from the various disparate places it's in.
And given my thesis that an awful lot of of
(22:09):
the creation of of what we now call England came
from Rome, well you've got to start that only in Rome,
but actual you've got to start with the new Holy
Roman Empire, which was based in North Germany. So immediately
you're thinking, you're thinking Germany, Rome, Wessex where most of
well some of the action is going to take place, Mercier,
(22:31):
the Midlands where a lot of it's going to take place,
Wales because they're threatening Mercier. Of where are the Vikings, Oh,
they're up in Northumbria, so we've got to go up there.
Got a bit of love interest. Where shall we put her?
She needs to be near Wessex, but were not too
near the Isle of Wights.
Speaker 4 (22:48):
Suddenly we have this swirl of places and this swirl
of people.
Speaker 5 (22:53):
And I'm not sure how complex I had wanted it
to be when I first started. Indeed, what I always
wanted it to be was clear. I wanted it to
be a page turner. I didn't want people having to
scurry to the beginning again to go who's he married to?
Who does she sleep with? So I wanted but I
(23:14):
found myself writing something that was.
Speaker 2 (23:16):
Just like, well, it's quite evident in the book in
the way you mentioned that there is it being a
streamlined in quite a page turner.
Speaker 1 (23:23):
It's written, there's not it's not overly described.
Speaker 2 (23:26):
There's not too much description in there, and when you're
talking about historic period you expect there to be.
Speaker 1 (23:33):
But I found it quite easy to go.
Speaker 2 (23:34):
Through, and it was short and punchy, and obviously there's
a lot of wit in there from your comedy elements
as well. So how did you manage to get that
balance between not being overly descriptive but keeping the detail
in there.
Speaker 5 (23:47):
I've always been very interested in Berthel Brecht, and when
I was a theater director, I think one of the
first things that I directed was Caucasian Chalk's Circle, and
he taught me very much the about the economy of props,
that you if you go into a room, you can
do that kind of writing where you write about the
(24:10):
whole room, or you can describe the worn leather of
a particular chair and the and the worn down candle,
and the little leak in the roof, which is taking
your concentration while you want to talk to somebody. And
that seems to me to be an equally valid way
(24:31):
of telling a story. It is, after all, by and large,
what television is about, isn't it, By and large, you
will get a very brief establishing shot. But the real
work that the designer does, what the environment does, is
what is what's happening just behind your shoulders, as far
(24:53):
as far as you know looking at me, Now, maybe
there's this is all there is the room. It's been
very well designed around me. But that's all you need
to know. You don't need to know.
Speaker 4 (25:05):
About the rest of them is populated.
Speaker 5 (25:08):
So that's and and that's how, and the same is
true with the same as true with the writing A
lot at the time. I didn't want to write, he thought,
and wanted to sound brave although he knew that his
niece was shaking. I wanted the I wanted the reader
to do that work if they wanted to, because they
(25:31):
were being driven along at an intense speed, and they
could decide when they wanted to look out of the
window or not. And if they couldn't quite see what
was going that what was taking place outside the window,
they could use their minds to fill that space. And
that was why that was my tactic.
Speaker 3 (25:49):
Yeah, so, Tony, you had all these you had all
the ideas obviously in your mind of what you wanted
to explore, and all the locations and everything like that.
But can you talk us through the actual process of
just in the first maybe chat to down what was
that like in terms of going, I'm going to start here,
this is my starting point, this is my starting character,
(26:09):
and then how did it sort of build and develop
into the novel that we now have.
Speaker 5 (26:15):
When I first started, I thought I was going to
actually write a piece of long form television m hm.
The first we have in the novel as it stands now,
we have one slave girl called Rhiannon. The first thought
(26:38):
I had was that there would be three slave girls
from different parts of the Holy Roman Empire, where one
was from Wales, one was from Bulgaria, one from North Africa,
and they would be like a Greek chorus throughout it,
a combination of a Greek chorus and the naughtiest fourteen
(26:58):
year old, comprehensive school girl from South Wales that that
you've ever known in your life. So that was and
that was quite a useful starting place because although actually
you don't need three well you might need three if
it was a drama, but where if you're writing a book,
you don't need three.
Speaker 4 (27:16):
You just have you know, a lot of ideas. What it.
Speaker 5 (27:24):
Given that I was starting from a very kind of disruptive,
dysfunctional standpoint of these naughty kids. It actually gave me
a banner to wave as I started writing it. M hm,
and I wanted, I wanted to write about I wanted
(27:45):
there was. There's quite a lot of swearing it you
might you might have noticed that there it is. It's
a deliberate it's a deliberate strategy. It's about people who go, ah,
fucking now, how am I going to get out of this? Oh?
I know?
Speaker 4 (28:00):
Or cheat and lie?
Speaker 1 (28:03):
But that's real. That's real for me. Yeah, my world.
Speaker 2 (28:08):
I thoroughly enjoyed that aspect. And you mentioned the sort
of right in it for TV? Is that something that
you're hoping to happen? We've seen the joys of Bernard
Cornwell's The Last Kingdom series in book format and on TV.
Do you think do you have that aspiration for the
Wolf House A wolf.
Speaker 4 (28:24):
No, I'm not that bothered to be something.
Speaker 5 (28:26):
If somebody does come along at some time and say, hey,
do you want to talk about the television series, well
then that's that's for another day. At the moment, I'm
totally immersed in writing a trilogy all my life since
I was. When you gave the summary of my life,
you were right, except you missed out the first sixteen years.
I was a child actor for a long time, so
(28:48):
you know, from the age of sixteen to the age
of seventy six, I have been surrounded by the world
of television. I really I have no need, no burning
desire to transform Wolf into a television series. Having said that,
I'm knowing what I'm like.
Speaker 4 (29:06):
Were that ever to happen?
Speaker 5 (29:08):
Okay, right, so how do we make this work? Sort
of person I am, But at the moment, I'm just
excited about you know, I'm a third of the way
through the story of someone that well a number of
people who have grown to absolutely adore you do grow
to enough your characters, don't you just do yes?
Speaker 4 (29:28):
And I'm now.
Speaker 5 (29:30):
If I was terrified by the tabula rasa to start with,
now I just can't wait to find out what Swift
is going to do next, because she'll tell me. I've
put a proposition at the top of this page, but
by the third line she'll be bossing me about telling
me what's going to happen.
Speaker 2 (29:50):
You've got a lot of history elements, obviously in the
book considering what it is, and you've had a lot
of experience through time team, through a lot of historical
sort of eras experiences. So how much is it is
kind of accurate from your experiences and actual history invented.
Speaker 5 (30:07):
It's a It's a very good question, and to be honest,
there's no simple answer, and as you'll see, as you've
seen by this interview, I don't simple answers a number
of things. First of all, there's an awful lot about.
Speaker 4 (30:21):
The Anglo Saxon period we don't know.
Speaker 5 (30:25):
People always crave primary sources, but most primary sources are
the work of the publicity department see the medieval publicity department,
or or monks who have been told to write a
myth which will justify why it's the leading family in
(30:45):
the area should have that territory and some nobody else
should why what happened last week wasn't actually a failure,
it was a great trind So the idea that even
Bed Blessed, who I know tried his best, was writing
some kind of objective history is an absurdity. And in
(31:06):
exactly the same way you say, oh, you don't do
all that much dyscribing, do your tone that's true. But
they Assa and Bed didn't do that much describing, did they.
And when you look into the ground, there ain't much
dyscribe in there either.
Speaker 1 (31:24):
It's not gone rotten.
Speaker 4 (31:25):
So why am I using field accent?
Speaker 5 (31:29):
So there is a kind of void around around the
Anglo Saxon period and as far as the after twenty
years of time team. When I was constantly coming across
the Anglo Saxon period, I created my own Anglo Saxon,
as every archaeologist does, and or if they don't, I
(31:53):
do find them a bit tedious. If they tell me
something isn't a warm it's a linear feature. I really
don't want to know. I want to know it's a wall.
I want to know what hangings were hanging from it.
I want to know who was mailed to it. So
I've written out of a my own feeling of the
Anglo Saxon and secondly what I know about the Anglo
(32:17):
Saxon and what I've sought after about the Anglo Saxon,
so that the genuinely is no simple answer to it.
It's a sort of we'd best yeah, posh I am.
It's a sort of weird best.
Speaker 4 (32:32):
Of what I know what.
Speaker 5 (32:36):
I don't know what I think, I know what other
people have told me. And I've had this luxury of
being surrounded by some of the the greatest Anglo Saxon
specialists around for twenty years, and when I've shown the
work to them, they they nobody has kind of screwed
it up. As far as I know, nobody's screwed up
(32:58):
and gone humbug. They've They've understood what I'm doing, and
that's all that's important to me.
Speaker 4 (33:04):
And I think.
Speaker 5 (33:04):
It's sort of probably what I think writing fictional history
does best. The writer understands or believes he understands what
he's doing, and other people come to it and they
understand it too.
Speaker 2 (33:22):
So considering what you don't know, like you just spoke
about in terms of the history, what was there anything
that really surprised you that you learned about that era?
Speaker 5 (33:35):
Yeah, the biggest thing was how large the slave economy was.
I had no idea and if you look if you
look at most of the things about the Anglo Saxon period,
you don't realize that probably at least fifteen percent of
the economy was being driven by slaves, and those to
(34:00):
just include slaves that pirates had brought in, although it
clearly did. It included an awful lot of people Anglo
Saxons who had sold themselves into slavery because they were
so skinned. And it also involved a lot of slaves
as in the Roman Empire, who trained themselves up and
(34:22):
eventually became very valuable. And the Anglo Saxons were absolutely
crap at building boats. Can you imagine slaves having run
away from the vikings or disgraced vikings having to get out,
and all of a sudden, there's this massive economy who's
gagging to have boats built. So's all that was going on.
(34:45):
The other thing that really surprised me, although this was
this was a creeping surprise. Over the last fifteen or
so years, a lot of women historians have doing a
lot of really interesting work about the position of women
(35:07):
in Anglo Saxon England. It's very hard to get all
that much about ordinary working people, but I think it's
possible to extrapolate from what we know about senior figures.
Speaker 4 (35:23):
And the fact is.
Speaker 5 (35:26):
The position of an awful lot of incredibly dominant women
in the Anglo Saxon period was always there. It's just
that the historians didn't notice it. It's really true. You know,
even our lady of the Mercians people only letters, only
began to notice her a few.
Speaker 4 (35:47):
Years ago because you know, new critiques.
Speaker 5 (35:49):
Were arising about gender and whatnot. In thought that she
might as well have just gone down the shops and
back and cooked the tea. But she's she's always been there.
And and the more work that we do, the more
really powerful uh women we see. And when you think
(36:13):
what work must have been like in villages, we've always thought,
haven't we that women bake the bread and cut the flowers.
Speaker 4 (36:25):
Or whatever it is that we thought we might do.
Speaker 5 (36:28):
If you have a mason who is working from home,
does it make any sense at all for his wife
and his female kids not to have been doing part
of that work.
Speaker 4 (36:42):
Yeah, it doesn't, does it.
Speaker 5 (36:44):
Of course, like most blokes, they're not going to run
down to the market square and say, my wife is
fantastic at scott. But I am absolutely convinced that an
awful lot of the work that we put down to
skilled male workers was actually done by women. It makes
(37:06):
to me it makes no sense that it wasn't. And
so I've been tried to incorporate all that in me.
But to get round to that thinking about slaves in
the economy and women women running an awful lot of stuff.
Really it doesn't have to spin around the narrative.
Speaker 3 (37:24):
Yeah, I can imagine, so, Tony, we have a lot
of people who watch the show that are writers themselves
or want to be writers. Can you take us through
the sort of day to day I know you said
it was during COVID, but what was the actual writing
process like and how did you work with the publishers
as well? And when did you know the book was
ready to go out there into the world.
Speaker 5 (37:48):
Laura and I talk about this quite a lot, and
we are both of the breed of writer that thinks
the best work is done looking out of the window,
watching and that you neither, neither of us want to
put one word down on the page until we absolutely have.
Speaker 4 (38:13):
To, until we are so full of words, bursting.
Speaker 5 (38:17):
With ideas, with the ears throbbing because the ideas want
to come out that reluctantly we will start to write.
Speaker 4 (38:28):
Laura. Laura actually writes, and I think it's probably a
very good idea.
Speaker 5 (38:33):
She writes a sort of sixty or seventy page treatment.
First of all, I never did that I did. I
suppose it's because from I come from another kind of writing.
I tend to come from television writing, and so I
was always been much more of a note person. So
for for for to show you Book two, but it's
(38:54):
not in front of me. I've just got a clipboard
at the moment, and it's just it's it's full of
it's full of scribbled notes like that, and just go.
He has he has no hat. She will die before
the chapter is out. Make sure there is a songbird
(39:19):
in in this scene. Work out which kind you want.
And also look back at Jim Moyer's book and see
what the names of things like blackbirds were called in
those days.
Speaker 4 (39:32):
Oh yeah, that's.
Speaker 5 (39:36):
That's that's my that's my first stab. And then I
will go straight from that to to a first draft.
But then but I will do nine I would do
nineteen drafts of that first draft.
Speaker 4 (39:48):
Mm hmm wow.
Speaker 3 (39:49):
So is that the notes? Are you going? This is
going to be let's say, it's going to be a
two thousand word chapter. These are the points that I
want to make. I've got the chapter ready now in
note form. I know where I want to go. I'm
going to write it by hand and then potentially type
it up. Is that how you work in the process.
Speaker 5 (40:08):
Well, for a start, I won't notice a two thousand
word chapter, and it'll be as long as it. When
I said about Bruce Springsteen, I love the three minute,
twelve second single.
Speaker 4 (40:18):
It's just a shape.
Speaker 5 (40:20):
About that whole thing, the whole, and I want my
chapters to be the shape, the right shape, the shape
for the feel, the shape for the story, and the
shape for the characters. So you'll notice that actually a
lot of what they are very different lengths my chapters,
(40:41):
and it's because of that. So so no, I don't
I don't think about the length, but I do think
about how I feel, how I'll feel at the beginning
of the chapter, and how I feel at the end
of the chapter, and the peak that I will want
to get to in the middle of the chapter, if
you know, if I want it to be one mountain.
(41:03):
What were the other bits about a chapter that you
asked me about then I.
Speaker 3 (41:06):
Can't remember, just about you know, taking farm and then
obviously that creating craft in the chapter.
Speaker 5 (41:12):
Yeah, yes, I I think I'm very much of the
sculptor form of writer. I know, I know, I know
what the emotional size of the chapter will be and
I get that down in my first draft, and then
(41:33):
I will in the second draft, I.
Speaker 4 (41:35):
Will go bang bang bang bang bang, and by the
time I get to know.
Speaker 2 (41:41):
Me obviously it's it's already noted if you look at
it on Amazon, on the websites, it's got the comments
about the width that's throughout this book.
Speaker 5 (41:52):
And I have not seen any comments about the book.
Speaker 2 (41:55):
Okay, yeah, there is so come in from the the
comedic background that you've got. Did you put specifically try
to weave in because you mentioned shedding light on a
dark place? So is this conscious effort to make it
a lighter, more humorous element of dark history.
Speaker 5 (42:11):
No.
Speaker 4 (42:12):
I didn't want it to be a dark history.
Speaker 5 (42:15):
I wanted it to be a history, and given that
the Middle Ages were called the Dark Ages, I wanted
light to run through it. I've been I've been amongst
starving people in Africa who are joking with me all
the time, NonStop, like the whole day and coming away
(42:39):
and actually feeling kind of uplifted but at the same
time painfully hurt.
Speaker 4 (42:44):
And that's and I wanted to get that. And I
love ironist and I.
Speaker 5 (42:48):
Love that I love the I love it when people
are facing danger they will do some silly quip. And
we all know you know that from people in the army,
don't we that still still gagging when the when the
bombs are going off. And so I really wanted to
get that feeling and joy and naught in us, I suppose, but.
Speaker 4 (43:10):
I didn't want it to be thought of as a
comic novel.
Speaker 5 (43:16):
Yeah, and if anyone has said that Amazon, I will
be very cross.
Speaker 2 (43:21):
Write it just highlighted that the you know, amongst all
the amazing comments, it was just the wits.
Speaker 4 (43:30):
They're amazing comments. Oh that's great.
Speaker 2 (43:32):
Yeah, they're quotes that have been set obviously by other
authors that have been who've read the book, have sent
them in.
Speaker 4 (43:37):
So I will reading people.
Speaker 2 (43:40):
Who know we're not yet too excited, too early for
that yet. I will be leaving one for you when
we can. But yes, it's it's fantastic. So, so what
we're going to do now, we've got fifteen minutes left,
So we're going to move on to our staple questions.
We're going to ask you a few random curves to
do it too much of an extent, But Chris, do
(44:01):
you want.
Speaker 1 (44:02):
To start us off with that.
Speaker 3 (44:04):
Yeah, So one of our staple questions, if you could
take any character from fiction and make that character your own,
Which character would you choose and what would you do
with them?
Speaker 5 (44:13):
Dorothea from Middle March, I would like to take the
thumb out of her ass good.
Speaker 4 (44:25):
It's the best, brilliant.
Speaker 5 (44:30):
Sorry, that's the first time I've given you a short answer.
Speaker 4 (44:34):
It's through you flailing.
Speaker 1 (44:38):
Perfect, Okay.
Speaker 2 (44:39):
If you could take the ending of anything, be a
TV show, a movie, or a novel and change the ending,
what ending you're going to change your life?
Speaker 4 (44:48):
That's a very good question, is.
Speaker 5 (44:51):
You know, like if you're interviewed on the Today program,
you don't answer the question. You just keep talking until
you think of the answer. That's you want to give
the best final chapter I've ever read.
Speaker 4 (45:06):
I only read a.
Speaker 5 (45:08):
Couple of years ago. I decided during lockdown that there
probably there were at least fifteen of the great novels
of the Western tradition that I hadn't read because I've
got no education.
Speaker 4 (45:23):
I left school at sixteen.
Speaker 5 (45:25):
So I thought that all these books I've never read,
that I never would and I thought this, now, this
has given me the perfect opportunity I read fourteen of
them before the end of Lockdown. I gave up on
Henry James The Golden Bowl, but all the others I read.
And I read Ulysses for the first time and it
(45:48):
ain't the easiest read in the world. But the final
chapter is sublime. It is it is worth every hard
bit of the rest.
Speaker 4 (46:00):
Of the novel.
Speaker 5 (46:04):
And it's and it's about Molly Bloom And I suppose
if I wanted to order it and it's her voice,
she'd say, Oh, I love Tony Robinson too.
Speaker 1 (46:19):
Yeah, fantastic.
Speaker 4 (46:21):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (46:21):
So we have a bit of a marbage question now.
But you're on your deathbed looking back at your writing career,
what would you be happy with?
Speaker 1 (46:31):
What is success to you?
Speaker 5 (46:34):
I love the fact that Maid Marion and her Men
is still made married and her merryment. Sorry, it's still
adored by women who were eleven or twelve at the
time and are now in their mid forties and show
it to their kids. And I've just sold the rights
(46:58):
of it to be adapted as a stage show. And
the fact that people are still sufficiently interested interested in
something that I wrote at that time. Even saying it now,
I feel quite emotional.
Speaker 4 (47:14):
Mm hmm.
Speaker 5 (47:15):
And that was that That's the perfect example of something
that was written. It wasn't written about Laura, it was,
but it was written about the world that I perceived
Laura as being in.
Speaker 1 (47:28):
Mm hmm. Fantastic.
Speaker 2 (47:31):
Yeah, okay, there's a bit of echo. Okay, you're very
famous for the catchphrase, I have a cunning plan. So
what's the most cunning plan you've ever come up with?
And did it succeed or fail? Kind of hilariously, Lake
Waldricks always did.
Speaker 5 (47:51):
I suppose the most cunning plan that I've ever come
up with is writing the first book of a saga
that ended up at five hundred and forty pages, and
I had no idea that it would be any longer
than the traditional three hundred and ninety nine pages. Has
(48:17):
it paid off? This is launch day?
Speaker 4 (48:21):
Yeah, tell me tell me after the.
Speaker 5 (48:27):
After Waterstones has closed on the last day before Christmas,
then it paid off.
Speaker 2 (48:35):
It will be a Canning update of that book and
the success which I'm sure it will be.
Speaker 4 (48:41):
Yeah, well, thank you. Yeah with that as well, Tony.
Speaker 3 (48:44):
Obviously, if you if you always plan then to write saga,
how do you decide how to end book one and
then leave the events for book two. How did you
manage that?
Speaker 4 (48:56):
That's a terrific, terrific question, that was That was the
best question.
Speaker 5 (49:00):
You've got to ask me a better one next. When
I first started book one, I didn't know where I
was going to finish it. I thought I would probably
finish it much later than I did than I did.
I don't really want to give too much away, other
(49:22):
than to say that it was only really about halfway
through book one that I knew where I wanted to
finish it. But I also knew where I wanted to
end book two. I have no idea where I'm going
to end book three. I don't even know whether Alfred
will still be alive. I don't know if his son
will be alive. I have no idea at all as
(49:43):
yet about book three, but I feel confident. But how
that happened, I don't know whether any surprises them.
Speaker 3 (49:53):
Whilst writing book one, that surprised you when you know,
maybe a character to change direction or change course of
action that you thought, do you know what? I didn't
plan that, but I have to keep it in because
it's a great twist or a great you know, change,
or something all.
Speaker 5 (50:11):
Along the way, all along the way, particularly with with
what if it was a show? What you would call
your your female lead Swift, who is Alfred's sister. She
has constantly surprised me the career that the slave girl
have had. As soon as you give a slave the
(50:38):
possibility of running away will then the possibilities are endless,
aren't they? If you if you have a viking in
Orlander and you suddenly thought does he want actually to
be the hairy asked murderer that he has been all
his life? Or does he want to go in a
different direction again? As soon as you ask yourself that
(50:58):
there are limitless pot possibilities ahead of you. And I
suppose that's really what this whole thing of characters demanding
the direction in which they should go. Once you've had
that inkling of an idea, your brain just goes h
like that. And that's that constant hanging. Is how my
saga has been created.
Speaker 4 (51:22):
Is this?
Speaker 3 (51:23):
Obviously you've got the idea for three books, But have
you got any ideas for other novels where you'd want
to maybe deviate into a completely different world.
Speaker 5 (51:34):
I'm sure I have, but I don't want to look
at that part of myself yet. I really you know,
I'm seventy nine. I would like to make sure that
I do write the entire trilogy while I can still
find my way out of a room. I don't want
to do what a lot of people do, which is
(51:55):
to write a couple of books and then, you know,
write a spine novel before you come back at.
Speaker 4 (52:02):
The trilogy. Is my ambition at the moment.
Speaker 3 (52:05):
And with you mentioned as well, Sorry, Chris, I was
going to say, with you mentioned in your relationship obviously
with Laura and the fact that she's a very famous
writer and you know, writes on a regular basis as well,
has it ever crossed your mind or the conversation to
maybe do something together in the future.
Speaker 5 (52:24):
We have a very very strong and time relationship. We've
spoken to each other about three times to day. We
taught the grandchildren how to play poker last night. We
are always doing things together.
Speaker 4 (52:43):
We always have.
Speaker 5 (52:45):
I don't think the idea of writing together would hold
any attraction to either or of us. I think we
love what each other does, and I'm proud of each other.
We don't treading all over that with our big boots.
Speaker 4 (53:01):
You know, we should.
Speaker 5 (53:02):
We share, We share our lives. That's all, what could
be better than that?
Speaker 4 (53:08):
No, exactly.
Speaker 2 (53:10):
Yeah, I was going to ask that, Obviously, you've had
a lot of different sort of elements of your career
and then transitioned into novel writing at this stage, what
advice would you have for someone who really wants to
get into the novel writing aspect of their life, but
they're currently going through different changes before they start that process,
What advice would you give them?
Speaker 4 (53:29):
It would be totally presumptuous of me to ask that.
Speaker 5 (53:34):
All I can say is, when you're really panicking because
you've written seven pages, how the hell are you going
to write another four hundred?
Speaker 4 (53:47):
Believe me, if you stay in there, it'll happen.
Speaker 5 (53:51):
I remember being given a lecture by Damie Edith Evans
when I was a young actor, and she was talking
about building a character, and she said, I'm going to
try and mimic Edith Evans, but it was along the
lines of, if you know what your character is doing
in point A, you don't necessarily need to worry about
(54:13):
point B. What you're doing in point B, and then
maybe what in point C, and then you can go
back to point B and you so you can build
the character that one's probably more is you'll worry about
it less that way, she said, And I think that's
true about writing. You're going to you don't have. Obviously,
(54:34):
the ultimate job is going to be linear. Even with
William Burrows it was linear eventually, but it doesn't have
to be when you're creating it. I know, I absolutely
know what's going to happen in the penultimate chapter of
book two, but I haven't did I haven't put pen
(54:57):
paper at the tournament.
Speaker 4 (54:59):
Only it's so good.
Speaker 3 (55:02):
What do you now know that you'd wish you'd known
before you started writing the trilogy.
Speaker 4 (55:10):
That I could do it? Yeah?
Speaker 2 (55:13):
Nice, Yeah, Okay, we're going to have to wrap up soon,
but obviously we want to say before that even happens,
a massive congratulations for getting this book out there and
getting it ready for release day to day. Congratulations, And
obviously as writers, me and Chris we both know this.
It's known across the industry. You will have amazing reviews
(55:38):
and you will have the odd, random little one possibly,
but we'll on that little one just positives and ignore
the rest, and you're going to have plenty of those.
So yeah, congratulations, and I can't wait for the rest
of the series. To come out and we will certainly
be keeping tabs on that.
Speaker 4 (55:57):
Thanks a lot, great pleasures to talk to you about.
Thank you.
Speaker 3 (56:00):
Yeah, and if you're watching this now, obviously it is
released day, so you can go out and get yourself
a copy of the House of Both.
Speaker 1 (56:06):
Go and buy it.
Speaker 3 (56:08):
It's available in all good bookshops and obviously you can
support your local independent bookshops as well. But yeah, if
you if you read it and you love it, please
just get in touch with the show obviously you can.
Tony's been so hospitable to us on social media and
that as a result, he's having a chat with us
(56:28):
now as well, so you know, maybe maybe message Tony
as well and just say how much you enjoyed it.
Speaker 2 (56:35):
Yes, and if you could hit the like button and
subscribe if you haven't done so, that would be great.
It'll help like minded people find the show and leave
us some comments and follow up questions if you want,
and we'll try to do our best to answer those.
But from us I always say is thank you so
much to Tony, and thank you guys, and as Chris said,
please do pick the book up. But I have a
great weekend and stay safe everybody, and we'll see you
(56:58):
all next show.
Speaker 1 (56:59):
Thank you guys. Fine fine,
Hello, and welcome to the Writing Community Chat show. Hello everybody.
Speaker 2 (00:15):
I am super excited for today's show. We hope you've
had a great week, and I hope you're ready to
settle in and watch this because it's going to be
a great one.
Speaker 1 (00:24):
Chris, how are you doing. How's your week been?
Speaker 3 (00:27):
Yeah, very excited and obviously to do this show a
little bit different from how we usually do it. This
is not going out live, this is being pre recorded.
But that's fantastic because it means we get to bring
an exclusive interview when today's guest book comes out, so
that's very exciting times.
Speaker 2 (00:47):
Yes, and it does take away from from the kind
of week we both had because You've had a terrible injury.
I've got you know, Niglin back, getting too our middle ages,
and I've had a car blowout incident and all sorts
of stuff.
Speaker 1 (00:58):
So it's been a bit of a hectic week.
Speaker 2 (01:00):
But we're tuning it into ending it in a great
way with a great interview. So yeah, I'm glad we're
at the end of it.
Speaker 1 (01:07):
Chris.
Speaker 3 (01:08):
Yeah, and a second sir that we've had on the show,
so we've had sur Ian Rankin on the show and
now we've got another sir, so you know, maybe we
go for a hat trick of stirs at some point,
but tonight he's a fantastic guest and really looking forward
to chat too.
Speaker 1 (01:23):
Yes, absolutely, I'm not sure who what other says there
are that.
Speaker 2 (01:26):
We could get on, but I'm sure there are plenty
of them, although it's very, very exceptional for us to
have too, So we're very honored with that in mind, Chris,
I'll get tonight's guest on and we'll dig into the
background of this character, add characters and of course this
new journey into novel writing, so let me get started
on that. So we're absolutely delighted to welcome Sir Tony
(01:50):
Robinson to the Writing Committy Chat Show. So Tony is
one of Britain's best love entertainers. A master storyteller and
award winning writer, he's famous for creating the iconic character
Boldrick from the classic PBC comedy Blackadder and for presenting
twenty seasons of Channels four archaeology series Time Team. He's
a true household name with a career spanning decades on
(02:11):
stage and screen. He's an actor, comedian, presenter and author
who has won multiple awards including Bafter and RTS Awards
for his work. In twenty thirteen, Sir Tony Awarded was
awarded and knighted for his contributions to drama and charity.
And it's not every day we get to chat to
a cultural icon and of course a knight of the realm.
(02:32):
Now Tony is adding yet another chapter to his remarkable career,
making his adult fiction debut with a brand new novel,
The House of Wolf. And today The House of Wolf launches,
so huge, congratulations and we can't wait to delve into
the backstory behind the book and Tony's journey to becoming
a novelist. Please welcome Tony Robertson. Hello Tony, he right.
Speaker 4 (02:54):
Great, what a great opening.
Speaker 1 (02:57):
Thank you so much.
Speaker 2 (02:59):
Honestly, we are so excited to have you on the
show and you are remarkable in your career, so thank
you so much for joining us.
Speaker 5 (03:05):
How are you doing really really well. It's I've been
over in Spain for.
Speaker 4 (03:11):
Most of the summer.
Speaker 5 (03:12):
I'm actually there now, although I'm supposed to be back
in England for the launch, and it's been extraordinarily hot,
as you know. But it's funny this moment when you
finish writing a book and you just passed over to
the publisher. Suddenly all that energy that's been going round
(03:32):
your head result as it took to write the book,
particularly all the energy that went into getting it delivered
on time and oh my god, a mistake on page
three hundred and eighty. All that stuff it suddenly disappears,
and it's like it's like you've been thrown out of
a plane and you don't know whether there's a parachute
(03:52):
or not, but you're just going. And that's really like
my summary has been most writers. My daughter, who is
a very well known writer too, she said, most writers
go mad between the moment they deliver the book and
the moment it gets published.
Speaker 4 (04:12):
That's certainly been my case.
Speaker 2 (04:15):
Yeah, we have had the pleasure of interviewing Laura at
your daughter.
Speaker 4 (04:19):
Oh how do you I didn't know that.
Speaker 2 (04:20):
Yes, crimeris festival. We've met her twice and she is fantastic.
So yeah, it's amazing to see that that, you know,
creativity runs in the family.
Speaker 5 (04:30):
Yes, it's funny that I don't really know what that's about.
It's sort of I stood over her with a sharp
stick making a hand move across the place.
Speaker 2 (04:43):
Yeah, so your career, you know, is you've gone from
drama school, into drama, into presenting in comedy and all
those great things. At what point did you kind of
realize writing was the nagging in the back of your
brain because you've written over thirty thirty children's books as well.
Speaker 5 (04:59):
Yes, I an awful lot of writing, sort of without
realizing I was writing, certainly not thinking that I was
a writer. Virtually all the writing I've done has been
towards an end, which is not necessarily the book, so that,
(05:20):
for instance, when I trained to be a theater director,
I was writing program notes. I was writing notes all
day for my actors. When I was writing comedy shows
to be directed on Stasia, I was writing all the
links that were required, and then I would be writing
some sketches those kinds. But the word a writer never
(05:43):
crossed my mind. Even when I was working as a
children's theater director at what's now called the MAC in Birmingham,
the Middleton's Arts Center. It had its own professional theater company,
and I had a director's bursary to train as director
in the late sixties, and I was writing children's plays.
(06:05):
But I never really thought of myself as a playwright
or as a writer. It was just kind of part
of what I was doing, that great sort of swirl
of things that wanted every day. And I don't know,
I think maybe I stopped when we were doing Blackadder.
(06:30):
I started writing children's books. There's another story there were
can talk to about another time, but it was at
the time when my children were young. So writing the
children's books was driven by the space that I had
in my heart, both for my own kids and also
for the kids that came around all that banter and patter.
I loved all that, I loved being around all that,
(06:51):
and just kind of, you know, started writing into that space.
And I wrote children's books for a long time. Then
I kind of I just stopped because my children got older.
But then I started writing books which were essentially spin
offs of television series that I was doing. So in fact,
(07:13):
I won the Blue Peter Factual Award for The Worst
Children's Jobs in History, which was a spin off of
the television series The Worst Jobs in History that I've
written before. I can't remember what your question was at all,
but it's about this fact that really, until I wrote
(07:34):
The House of Wolf, I hadn't been I had never
had that existential confrontation between a bloke I'm gonna do
this gesture again because I'd write my hand, his pen
and a blank page, which which is now my everyday lot.
Speaker 4 (07:52):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (07:53):
So what difference is it from writing all the experiences
of writing that you've had, so now writing a novel.
Speaker 5 (08:00):
Absolutely completely total And I hadn't realized that would be
the case. When I was writing children's work, as I say,
I was, Ali was driven by the fact that it's
not as though my kids were in the room. I'm
repeating myself a little, I know, but it's I was
(08:20):
writing into the space that I felt when they were
into when they were in the room. And reading back
on the children's authors that I really love from uh
Hans Christian Anderson, the Brothers Grim, Joan Aike In, Dinah
Wynn Jones, role Dat, they all talk about something like
(08:42):
that about when they start work in the morning, occupying
that space. And that's that's how that felt for me.
So I knew, I kind of knew what I was doing.
And then when I was writing all the spin off stuff,
even I was commissioned to write a history of Australia
for for penguin In Australia.
Speaker 4 (09:03):
I knew what the narrative was. It was bloody there.
Speaker 5 (09:06):
I couldn't really, I couldn't alter it. But the thing
you you pitch a novel and then what if you got?
Speaker 2 (09:17):
Absolutely yeah?
Speaker 5 (09:19):
And and really the the terror, the imposter syndrome that
I went have been through for the last few years
was mammoth mammoth.
Speaker 4 (09:30):
And it's such a.
Speaker 5 (09:31):
Relief talking to really senior writers who whose work I
absolutely adore, and they say, oh my god, I feel
that every day I vomit in the louver before us
start working. I'm so terrified because I know this time
I will be revealed as the the sham that I am. Yeah,
(09:51):
I thought it was just me.
Speaker 4 (09:52):
It's crazy.
Speaker 1 (09:53):
It's amazing.
Speaker 2 (09:54):
We've had authors on the show that have had amazing
long careers and best sellers across the board, and you
when they say, at a later stage of their career
they feel that imposter syndrome lurking over them all the time.
Speaker 1 (10:04):
You know it never goes away.
Speaker 5 (10:05):
Yeah, yeah, absolutely, I maybe you need it. I don't know,
but it's certainly there. I'd rather not have it, I
really really would rather. I'll tell you what was really nice.
Speaker 4 (10:21):
From the get go.
Speaker 5 (10:22):
I mean, we can talk about how the book developed,
admit it, But from the get go, my agent was
right behind it and my publisher was right behind us,
and they were saying really, really lovely things to me.
But you know the problem with imposter syndrome is that
someone will say something nice to you and it just
(10:42):
kind of goes yeah when you would say that, wouldn't
you it is actually shit?
Speaker 4 (10:49):
And it wasn't until.
Speaker 5 (10:53):
The my publisher had sent out all the proofs and
the comments started coming back. Suddenly, people whose work I've
always adored, Stephanie Merritt, Dan Jones, Mark Billingham, people were
coming back and saying such incredibly nice things about what
(11:16):
I had written. I can't say it got rid of
the imposter syndrome completely, but suddenly I thought, well, I
was actually prepared to lash out for a party on
the first night. I hadn't been prepared to do up
toil that moment, I thought, oh my god, no one
will come, so that I think that was probably that
(11:40):
was one of the most awful thing to say, isn't
it How one needs one's ego being nurtured?
Speaker 4 (11:46):
But I really did. It was such a I don't
even make my head swell.
Speaker 5 (11:52):
It was just an enormous sense of relief. Hey, if
Steph Merritt likes it, I can go with that.
Speaker 4 (12:00):
I know if everybody else goes boom boom boo.
Speaker 5 (12:02):
Well, I know how wonderful her books are. So she
thinks mine was great.
Speaker 3 (12:07):
Yeah, so, Tony, it sounds like we've you writing. It's
come from a place of obviously, when you're writing children's books,
it was a love with your children and entertaining them.
And then obviously when you're writing with the comedy, that
again is coming from a place of work with How
did that come about in terms of, like you said before,
before we came on a he said, no one kind
of expected you to write a novel. Was this a
(12:29):
real passiony project for you and something that's been in
your mind for a long time?
Speaker 5 (12:34):
An enormous passion project on a number of fronts. I've
always been interested in King Alfred. In fact, Laura and
my daughter, I won't be indelicate enough to tell you
her exact age, but she is at her forties. She
reminds me that when she was eighteen, I actually gave
her two weeks money to research King Alfred for me
for another project I was trying to get off the ground,
(12:55):
which I never did because it just didn't work.
Speaker 4 (12:57):
So he's always been there.
Speaker 5 (12:59):
This third story about Alfred and the cakes, what's that
all about?
Speaker 4 (13:04):
We all remember it, but it's just kind of like gibberish.
Speaker 5 (13:08):
Really, the fact that this arrogant man was so full
of his own shit that he couldn't be bothered to
take notice of this poor old woman's cakes who were
burning on the fire, and then she got really cross
with him.
Speaker 4 (13:23):
That hardly proves that you're going to be a good king.
Speaker 5 (13:26):
Does it. So what was that story about? So that
was always revolving around my head. And the second thing
was he was the youngest of five sons. He was
never meant to be king. He was probably in Rome
for most of his teens. He was probably training for
the church. Suddenly he was thrown into this position of
being a king, and it seems like for the first
(13:47):
few years he was pretty rubbish at it, and then
suddenly the whole thing turns around. He's in athlone five
twenty five square miles or whatever. It was really small.
If you lose that, Wessex falls the whole of what
we now call England falls and we spend up spend
(14:08):
today speaking Danish and eating bacon. You know that that's
what would have happened probably, And yet he turned the
whole thing around. And I've always thought, how did it happen?
Did he do it on his own? He can't have
done it on his own. Who did he do it with?
What were the thoughts that were going on his head?
He didn't just win battles. He transformed the economy, the church,
(14:31):
the legislature, the coinage, kind of everything. And his son
was just as good, and his grandson was just as good.
Three brilliant kings on the trot. You know how often
do we get that in British history. So all of
that was going through me, and then we got to lockdown.
(14:54):
And I know lockdown was terrible for a huge number
of people, and my heart goes out to the people
who had a really terrible time. I have to say
it was wonderful for me. It's a bit shaming, but
it's true because I had always worked, and I'd always
filled every gap in my life with working. Suddenly not
only could I not work, but nobody else was working either,
(15:17):
so I couldn't feel bad about it, and so all
these ideas were buzzing around in my head, and one
of the strongest was, why don't you do what you
have always wanted to do, which is actually create the
story of Alfred. And then I thought, Okay, I wanted
to create the story of Alfred, but this is my Alfred.
(15:37):
I don't want to sit down and go Alfred the
Great was born on blah blah blah blah. When he
was eighteen blah blah blah blah, he fought a battle
that was very fun. You know, we've all known books
like that, and we've all known fictional books which are
actually like that. I mean, I think, to me, Dan
Brown is the epitome of someone who gets a load
(16:01):
of people to do a loads of research for him
and then just knit something a bit vague between the
various bits of research. Sorry, Dan, you know I probably
shouldn't be critical, but it doesn't matter.
Speaker 4 (16:12):
You've made more money than I ever will.
Speaker 5 (16:14):
But anyway, you know, I really hate that kind of book,
and I really hate that kind of history book. I
wanted to write out of everything.
Speaker 4 (16:21):
That I've always cared about. Well, I like.
Speaker 5 (16:26):
Somebody was saying to me, who are the two people
who influenced you most in the writing this book.
Speaker 4 (16:35):
And I said Springsteen and George Elliott.
Speaker 5 (16:42):
And all I mean is all I meant by that
is they've always been in my head. They've always been
They've always been behind whatever it is I create just
a sort of everything is all the experience that I
had when I was on the executive of the nation,
the national executive of the Labor Party, and that was
(17:04):
at the time when there are war was about to happen,
and when it happened, all that being so close to
senior politicians at that moment for someone who's interested in
history was regardless of what one might feel about the outcome,
(17:25):
the sheer mechanics of being around when all that happened
was phenomenal. I've always been interested in Christianity, not as Christian,
but because it is always been the predominant ideology in
Britain for the last two thousand years. How did that work?
(17:45):
What is the inter relationship between ordinary people's lives and
those sets of beliefs, and what happens when those beliefs
go wrong, or what happens when these people who we
call heretics emerge, who might well be really brilliant thinkers,
but thinking so far outside the box that the authorities
(18:06):
feel they need to be burned.
Speaker 4 (18:08):
You know, how does all that happened? What happens when you.
Speaker 5 (18:11):
Are surrounded by what we used to call vikings, what
I call the Norlanders. Your little island is surrounded by
people who you fear if they catch you or you
saw you from there down to between your legs between
there and open you up and just let you right.
Speaker 4 (18:30):
Like kind of every thought.
Speaker 5 (18:32):
I've ever had about Alfred and about the rest of
my life kind of went into that book. As I
suspect it's the case for an awful lot of people
in their first book. I think it. Maybe it's why
the second book is often so problematic, because you've had
all this stuff which needs to be exercised. Now I've
cheated because I'm saying this is the first part of
(18:54):
the trilogy, and so I think all that's stuff that
I've always felt. Well, I know, because I've started working
on the second book, it is still there to be generated.
But so when you say did it come out of love?
It came out of everything I've ever known. If that
does sound too, I know all this sounds a bit wanky,
(19:15):
but it is.
Speaker 4 (19:16):
Actually, it's true. It is actually the mechanism.
Speaker 2 (19:21):
What's interesting is you've traveled a lot in your life
through your for your work and you know obviously pleasure
as well. You've even gone down to the Titanic with
with Cameron. But your novel is situated through a lot
of different places, including Wales. So why why do you
(19:42):
think you've chosen those locations specifically?
Speaker 5 (19:47):
I've always loved sagas since I was a kid. I
think what the first book that stuck with me. It
wasn't The Iliad and the Odyssey, but it was the
children's version of the Iliad and the Obviously it's why
later on I wrote this, He's the greatest hero of
(20:07):
them all.
Speaker 4 (20:07):
It was a sort of.
Speaker 5 (20:09):
It was an homage to how I'd felt about all
those stories when I was young. Once again, I loved
the Biblical stories, not from not from a Christian perspective,
but all those stories about David and Goliath and Soul
and the prophet Samuel and all that stuff. I just
(20:30):
thought that was so great. And later on, when I
saw the first Foresight saga on the television, when I
first started reading Bleak House and realized quite how huge
it was.
Speaker 4 (20:44):
I always loved it.
Speaker 5 (20:45):
And when we got to Netflix, you know, I'm middle aged,
and suddenly every week there is a new saga to watch,
not just a new saga, but a new saga written
by a genius of our, of a of a showrunner,
accompanied by ten extremely well paid, probably equally brilliant writers.
(21:09):
And when I first saw a Game of Thrones, and
but some people were being sneary about it because there's
an awful lot of tips in this and a lot
of violence. Yes, I hardly noticed most of.
Speaker 6 (21:22):
That, because what I could see was just these ideas
pull pull, pull, and Martin was was writing.
Speaker 5 (21:34):
He would just next chapter, Okay, let's write a new country,
let's write a new civilization, and we're going to link
them all together.
Speaker 4 (21:43):
And I've always absolutely adored that.
Speaker 5 (21:45):
And given that what I'm talking about in Game in
interesting I can call my own book Game of Throws,
House of Wolf is is how South Britain came together. Well,
you've got to start from the various disparate places it's in.
And given my thesis that an awful lot of of
(22:09):
the creation of of what we now call England came
from Rome, well you've got to start that only in Rome,
but actual you've got to start with the new Holy
Roman Empire, which was based in North Germany. So immediately
you're thinking, you're thinking Germany, Rome, Wessex where most of
well some of the action is going to take place, Mercier,
(22:31):
the Midlands where a lot of it's going to take place,
Wales because they're threatening Mercier. Of where are the Vikings, Oh,
they're up in Northumbria, so we've got to go up there.
Got a bit of love interest. Where shall we put her?
She needs to be near Wessex, but were not too
near the Isle of Wights.
Speaker 4 (22:48):
Suddenly we have this swirl of places and this swirl
of people.
Speaker 5 (22:53):
And I'm not sure how complex I had wanted it
to be when I first started. Indeed, what I always
wanted it to be was clear. I wanted it to
be a page turner. I didn't want people having to
scurry to the beginning again to go who's he married to?
Who does she sleep with? So I wanted but I
(23:14):
found myself writing something that was.
Speaker 2 (23:16):
Just like, well, it's quite evident in the book in
the way you mentioned that there is it being a
streamlined in quite a page turner.
Speaker 1 (23:23):
It's written, there's not it's not overly described.
Speaker 2 (23:26):
There's not too much description in there, and when you're
talking about historic period you expect there to be.
Speaker 1 (23:33):
But I found it quite easy to go.
Speaker 2 (23:34):
Through, and it was short and punchy, and obviously there's
a lot of wit in there from your comedy elements
as well. So how did you manage to get that
balance between not being overly descriptive but keeping the detail
in there.
Speaker 5 (23:47):
I've always been very interested in Berthel Brecht, and when
I was a theater director, I think one of the
first things that I directed was Caucasian Chalk's Circle, and
he taught me very much the about the economy of props,
that you if you go into a room, you can
do that kind of writing where you write about the
(24:10):
whole room, or you can describe the worn leather of
a particular chair and the and the worn down candle,
and the little leak in the roof, which is taking
your concentration while you want to talk to somebody. And
that seems to me to be an equally valid way
(24:31):
of telling a story. It is, after all, by and large,
what television is about, isn't it, By and large, you
will get a very brief establishing shot. But the real
work that the designer does, what the environment does, is
what is what's happening just behind your shoulders, as far
(24:53):
as far as you know looking at me, Now, maybe
there's this is all there is the room. It's been
very well designed around me. But that's all you need
to know. You don't need to know.
Speaker 4 (25:05):
About the rest of them is populated.
Speaker 5 (25:08):
So that's and and that's how, and the same is
true with the same as true with the writing A
lot at the time. I didn't want to write, he thought,
and wanted to sound brave although he knew that his
niece was shaking. I wanted the I wanted the reader
to do that work if they wanted to, because they
(25:31):
were being driven along at an intense speed, and they
could decide when they wanted to look out of the
window or not. And if they couldn't quite see what
was going that what was taking place outside the window,
they could use their minds to fill that space. And
that was why that was my tactic.
Speaker 3 (25:49):
Yeah, so, Tony, you had all these you had all
the ideas obviously in your mind of what you wanted
to explore, and all the locations and everything like that.
But can you talk us through the actual process of
just in the first maybe chat to down what was
that like in terms of going, I'm going to start here,
this is my starting point, this is my starting character,
(26:09):
and then how did it sort of build and develop
into the novel that we now have.
Speaker 5 (26:15):
When I first started, I thought I was going to
actually write a piece of long form television m hm.
The first we have in the novel as it stands now,
we have one slave girl called Rhiannon. The first thought
(26:38):
I had was that there would be three slave girls
from different parts of the Holy Roman Empire, where one
was from Wales, one was from Bulgaria, one from North Africa,
and they would be like a Greek chorus throughout it,
a combination of a Greek chorus and the naughtiest fourteen
(26:58):
year old, comprehensive school girl from South Wales that that
you've ever known in your life. So that was and
that was quite a useful starting place because although actually
you don't need three well you might need three if
it was a drama, but where if you're writing a book,
you don't need three.
Speaker 4 (27:16):
You just have you know, a lot of ideas. What it.
Speaker 5 (27:24):
Given that I was starting from a very kind of disruptive,
dysfunctional standpoint of these naughty kids. It actually gave me
a banner to wave as I started writing it. M hm,
and I wanted, I wanted to write about I wanted
(27:45):
there was. There's quite a lot of swearing it you
might you might have noticed that there it is. It's
a deliberate it's a deliberate strategy. It's about people who go, ah,
fucking now, how am I going to get out of this? Oh?
I know?
Speaker 4 (28:00):
Or cheat and lie?
Speaker 1 (28:03):
But that's real. That's real for me. Yeah, my world.
Speaker 2 (28:08):
I thoroughly enjoyed that aspect. And you mentioned the sort
of right in it for TV? Is that something that
you're hoping to happen? We've seen the joys of Bernard
Cornwell's The Last Kingdom series in book format and on TV.
Do you think do you have that aspiration for the
Wolf House A wolf.
Speaker 4 (28:24):
No, I'm not that bothered to be something.
Speaker 5 (28:26):
If somebody does come along at some time and say, hey,
do you want to talk about the television series, well
then that's that's for another day. At the moment, I'm
totally immersed in writing a trilogy all my life since
I was. When you gave the summary of my life,
you were right, except you missed out the first sixteen years.
I was a child actor for a long time, so
(28:48):
you know, from the age of sixteen to the age
of seventy six, I have been surrounded by the world
of television. I really I have no need, no burning
desire to transform Wolf into a television series. Having said that,
I'm knowing what I'm like.
Speaker 4 (29:06):
Were that ever to happen?
Speaker 5 (29:08):
Okay, right, so how do we make this work? Sort
of person I am, But at the moment, I'm just
excited about you know, I'm a third of the way
through the story of someone that well a number of
people who have grown to absolutely adore you do grow
to enough your characters, don't you just do yes?
Speaker 4 (29:28):
And I'm now.
Speaker 5 (29:30):
If I was terrified by the tabula rasa to start with,
now I just can't wait to find out what Swift
is going to do next, because she'll tell me. I've
put a proposition at the top of this page, but
by the third line she'll be bossing me about telling
me what's going to happen.
Speaker 2 (29:50):
You've got a lot of history elements, obviously in the
book considering what it is, and you've had a lot
of experience through time team, through a lot of historical
sort of eras experiences. So how much is it is
kind of accurate from your experiences and actual history invented.
Speaker 5 (30:07):
It's a It's a very good question, and to be honest,
there's no simple answer, and as you'll see, as you've
seen by this interview, I don't simple answers a number
of things. First of all, there's an awful lot about.
Speaker 4 (30:21):
The Anglo Saxon period we don't know.
Speaker 5 (30:25):
People always crave primary sources, but most primary sources are
the work of the publicity department see the medieval publicity department,
or or monks who have been told to write a
myth which will justify why it's the leading family in
(30:45):
the area should have that territory and some nobody else
should why what happened last week wasn't actually a failure,
it was a great trind So the idea that even
Bed Blessed, who I know tried his best, was writing
some kind of objective history is an absurdity. And in
(31:06):
exactly the same way you say, oh, you don't do
all that much dyscribing, do your tone that's true. But
they Assa and Bed didn't do that much describing, did they.
And when you look into the ground, there ain't much
dyscribe in there either.
Speaker 1 (31:24):
It's not gone rotten.
Speaker 4 (31:25):
So why am I using field accent?
Speaker 5 (31:29):
So there is a kind of void around around the
Anglo Saxon period and as far as the after twenty
years of time team. When I was constantly coming across
the Anglo Saxon period, I created my own Anglo Saxon,
as every archaeologist does, and or if they don't, I
(31:53):
do find them a bit tedious. If they tell me
something isn't a warm it's a linear feature. I really
don't want to know. I want to know it's a wall.
I want to know what hangings were hanging from it.
I want to know who was mailed to it. So
I've written out of a my own feeling of the
Anglo Saxon and secondly what I know about the Anglo
(32:17):
Saxon and what I've sought after about the Anglo Saxon,
so that the genuinely is no simple answer to it.
It's a sort of we'd best yeah, posh I am.
It's a sort of weird best.
Speaker 4 (32:32):
Of what I know what.
Speaker 5 (32:36):
I don't know what I think, I know what other
people have told me. And I've had this luxury of
being surrounded by some of the the greatest Anglo Saxon
specialists around for twenty years, and when I've shown the
work to them, they they nobody has kind of screwed
it up. As far as I know, nobody's screwed up
(32:58):
and gone humbug. They've They've understood what I'm doing, and
that's all that's important to me.
Speaker 4 (33:04):
And I think.
Speaker 5 (33:04):
It's sort of probably what I think writing fictional history
does best. The writer understands or believes he understands what
he's doing, and other people come to it and they
understand it too.
Speaker 2 (33:22):
So considering what you don't know, like you just spoke
about in terms of the history, what was there anything
that really surprised you that you learned about that era?
Speaker 5 (33:35):
Yeah, the biggest thing was how large the slave economy was.
I had no idea and if you look if you
look at most of the things about the Anglo Saxon period,
you don't realize that probably at least fifteen percent of
the economy was being driven by slaves, and those to
(34:00):
just include slaves that pirates had brought in, although it
clearly did. It included an awful lot of people Anglo
Saxons who had sold themselves into slavery because they were
so skinned. And it also involved a lot of slaves
as in the Roman Empire, who trained themselves up and
(34:22):
eventually became very valuable. And the Anglo Saxons were absolutely
crap at building boats. Can you imagine slaves having run
away from the vikings or disgraced vikings having to get out,
and all of a sudden, there's this massive economy who's
gagging to have boats built. So's all that was going on.
(34:45):
The other thing that really surprised me, although this was
this was a creeping surprise. Over the last fifteen or
so years, a lot of women historians have doing a
lot of really interesting work about the position of women
(35:07):
in Anglo Saxon England. It's very hard to get all
that much about ordinary working people, but I think it's
possible to extrapolate from what we know about senior figures.
Speaker 4 (35:23):
And the fact is.
Speaker 5 (35:26):
The position of an awful lot of incredibly dominant women
in the Anglo Saxon period was always there. It's just
that the historians didn't notice it. It's really true. You know,
even our lady of the Mercians people only letters, only
began to notice her a few.
Speaker 4 (35:47):
Years ago because you know, new critiques.
Speaker 5 (35:49):
Were arising about gender and whatnot. In thought that she
might as well have just gone down the shops and
back and cooked the tea. But she's she's always been there.
And and the more work that we do, the more
really powerful uh women we see. And when you think
(36:13):
what work must have been like in villages, we've always thought,
haven't we that women bake the bread and cut the flowers.
Speaker 4 (36:25):
Or whatever it is that we thought we might do.
Speaker 5 (36:28):
If you have a mason who is working from home,
does it make any sense at all for his wife
and his female kids not to have been doing part
of that work.
Speaker 4 (36:42):
Yeah, it doesn't, does it.
Speaker 5 (36:44):
Of course, like most blokes, they're not going to run
down to the market square and say, my wife is
fantastic at scott. But I am absolutely convinced that an
awful lot of the work that we put down to
skilled male workers was actually done by women. It makes
(37:06):
to me it makes no sense that it wasn't. And
so I've been tried to incorporate all that in me.
But to get round to that thinking about slaves in
the economy and women women running an awful lot of stuff.
Really it doesn't have to spin around the narrative.
Speaker 3 (37:24):
Yeah, I can imagine, so, Tony, we have a lot
of people who watch the show that are writers themselves
or want to be writers. Can you take us through
the sort of day to day I know you said
it was during COVID, but what was the actual writing
process like and how did you work with the publishers
as well? And when did you know the book was
ready to go out there into the world.
Speaker 5 (37:48):
Laura and I talk about this quite a lot, and
we are both of the breed of writer that thinks
the best work is done looking out of the window,
watching and that you neither, neither of us want to
put one word down on the page until we absolutely have.
Speaker 4 (38:13):
To, until we are so full of words, bursting.
Speaker 5 (38:17):
With ideas, with the ears throbbing because the ideas want
to come out that reluctantly we will start to write.
Speaker 4 (38:28):
Laura. Laura actually writes, and I think it's probably a
very good idea.
Speaker 5 (38:33):
She writes a sort of sixty or seventy page treatment.
First of all, I never did that I did. I
suppose it's because from I come from another kind of writing.
I tend to come from television writing, and so I
was always been much more of a note person. So
for for for to show you Book two, but it's
(38:54):
not in front of me. I've just got a clipboard
at the moment, and it's just it's it's full of
it's full of scribbled notes like that, and just go.
He has he has no hat. She will die before
the chapter is out. Make sure there is a songbird
(39:19):
in in this scene. Work out which kind you want.
And also look back at Jim Moyer's book and see
what the names of things like blackbirds were called in
those days.
Speaker 4 (39:32):
Oh yeah, that's.
Speaker 5 (39:36):
That's that's my that's my first stab. And then I
will go straight from that to to a first draft.
But then but I will do nine I would do
nineteen drafts of that first draft.
Speaker 4 (39:48):
Mm hmm wow.
Speaker 3 (39:49):
So is that the notes? Are you going? This is
going to be let's say, it's going to be a
two thousand word chapter. These are the points that I
want to make. I've got the chapter ready now in
note form. I know where I want to go. I'm
going to write it by hand and then potentially type
it up. Is that how you work in the process.
Speaker 5 (40:08):
Well, for a start, I won't notice a two thousand
word chapter, and it'll be as long as it. When
I said about Bruce Springsteen, I love the three minute,
twelve second single.
Speaker 4 (40:18):
It's just a shape.
Speaker 5 (40:20):
About that whole thing, the whole, and I want my
chapters to be the shape, the right shape, the shape
for the feel, the shape for the story, and the
shape for the characters. So you'll notice that actually a
lot of what they are very different lengths my chapters,
(40:41):
and it's because of that. So so no, I don't
I don't think about the length, but I do think
about how I feel, how I'll feel at the beginning
of the chapter, and how I feel at the end
of the chapter, and the peak that I will want
to get to in the middle of the chapter, if
you know, if I want it to be one mountain.
(41:03):
What were the other bits about a chapter that you
asked me about then I.
Speaker 3 (41:06):
Can't remember, just about you know, taking farm and then
obviously that creating craft in the chapter.
Speaker 5 (41:12):
Yeah, yes, I I think I'm very much of the
sculptor form of writer. I know, I know, I know
what the emotional size of the chapter will be and
I get that down in my first draft, and then
(41:33):
I will in the second draft, I.
Speaker 4 (41:35):
Will go bang bang bang bang bang, and by the
time I get to know.
Speaker 2 (41:41):
Me obviously it's it's already noted if you look at
it on Amazon, on the websites, it's got the comments
about the width that's throughout this book.
Speaker 5 (41:52):
And I have not seen any comments about the book.
Speaker 2 (41:55):
Okay, yeah, there is so come in from the the
comedic background that you've got. Did you put specifically try
to weave in because you mentioned shedding light on a
dark place? So is this conscious effort to make it
a lighter, more humorous element of dark history.
Speaker 5 (42:11):
No.
Speaker 4 (42:12):
I didn't want it to be a dark history.
Speaker 5 (42:15):
I wanted it to be a history, and given that
the Middle Ages were called the Dark Ages, I wanted
light to run through it. I've been I've been amongst
starving people in Africa who are joking with me all
the time, NonStop, like the whole day and coming away
(42:39):
and actually feeling kind of uplifted but at the same
time painfully hurt.
Speaker 4 (42:44):
And that's and I wanted to get that. And I
love ironist and I.
Speaker 5 (42:48):
Love that I love the I love it when people
are facing danger they will do some silly quip. And
we all know you know that from people in the army,
don't we that still still gagging when the when the
bombs are going off. And so I really wanted to
get that feeling and joy and naught in us, I suppose, but.
Speaker 4 (43:10):
I didn't want it to be thought of as a
comic novel.
Speaker 5 (43:16):
Yeah, and if anyone has said that Amazon, I will
be very cross.
Speaker 2 (43:21):
Write it just highlighted that the you know, amongst all
the amazing comments, it was just the wits.
Speaker 4 (43:30):
They're amazing comments. Oh that's great.
Speaker 2 (43:32):
Yeah, they're quotes that have been set obviously by other
authors that have been who've read the book, have sent
them in.
Speaker 4 (43:37):
So I will reading people.
Speaker 2 (43:40):
Who know we're not yet too excited, too early for
that yet. I will be leaving one for you when
we can. But yes, it's it's fantastic. So, so what
we're going to do now, we've got fifteen minutes left,
So we're going to move on to our staple questions.
We're going to ask you a few random curves to
do it too much of an extent, But Chris, do
(44:01):
you want.
Speaker 1 (44:02):
To start us off with that.
Speaker 3 (44:04):
Yeah, So one of our staple questions, if you could
take any character from fiction and make that character your own,
Which character would you choose and what would you do
with them?
Speaker 5 (44:13):
Dorothea from Middle March, I would like to take the
thumb out of her ass good.
Speaker 4 (44:25):
It's the best, brilliant.
Speaker 5 (44:30):
Sorry, that's the first time I've given you a short answer.
Speaker 4 (44:34):
It's through you flailing.
Speaker 1 (44:38):
Perfect, Okay.
Speaker 2 (44:39):
If you could take the ending of anything, be a
TV show, a movie, or a novel and change the ending,
what ending you're going to change your life?
Speaker 4 (44:48):
That's a very good question, is.
Speaker 5 (44:51):
You know, like if you're interviewed on the Today program,
you don't answer the question. You just keep talking until
you think of the answer. That's you want to give
the best final chapter I've ever read.
Speaker 4 (45:06):
I only read a.
Speaker 5 (45:08):
Couple of years ago. I decided during lockdown that there
probably there were at least fifteen of the great novels
of the Western tradition that I hadn't read because I've
got no education.
Speaker 4 (45:23):
I left school at sixteen.
Speaker 5 (45:25):
So I thought that all these books I've never read,
that I never would and I thought this, now, this
has given me the perfect opportunity I read fourteen of
them before the end of Lockdown. I gave up on
Henry James The Golden Bowl, but all the others I read.
And I read Ulysses for the first time and it
(45:48):
ain't the easiest read in the world. But the final
chapter is sublime. It is it is worth every hard
bit of the rest.
Speaker 4 (46:00):
Of the novel.
Speaker 5 (46:04):
And it's and it's about Molly Bloom And I suppose
if I wanted to order it and it's her voice,
she'd say, Oh, I love Tony Robinson too.
Speaker 1 (46:19):
Yeah, fantastic.
Speaker 4 (46:21):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (46:21):
So we have a bit of a marbage question now.
But you're on your deathbed looking back at your writing career,
what would you be happy with?
Speaker 1 (46:31):
What is success to you?
Speaker 5 (46:34):
I love the fact that Maid Marion and her Men
is still made married and her merryment. Sorry, it's still
adored by women who were eleven or twelve at the
time and are now in their mid forties and show
it to their kids. And I've just sold the rights
(46:58):
of it to be adapted as a stage show. And
the fact that people are still sufficiently interested interested in
something that I wrote at that time. Even saying it now,
I feel quite emotional.
Speaker 4 (47:14):
Mm hmm.
Speaker 5 (47:15):
And that was that That's the perfect example of something
that was written. It wasn't written about Laura, it was,
but it was written about the world that I perceived
Laura as being in.
Speaker 1 (47:28):
Mm hmm. Fantastic.
Speaker 2 (47:31):
Yeah, okay, there's a bit of echo. Okay, you're very
famous for the catchphrase, I have a cunning plan. So
what's the most cunning plan you've ever come up with?
And did it succeed or fail? Kind of hilariously, Lake
Waldricks always did.
Speaker 5 (47:51):
I suppose the most cunning plan that I've ever come
up with is writing the first book of a saga
that ended up at five hundred and forty pages, and
I had no idea that it would be any longer
than the traditional three hundred and ninety nine pages. Has
(48:17):
it paid off? This is launch day?
Speaker 4 (48:21):
Yeah, tell me tell me after the.
Speaker 5 (48:27):
After Waterstones has closed on the last day before Christmas,
then it paid off.
Speaker 2 (48:35):
It will be a Canning update of that book and
the success which I'm sure it will be.
Speaker 4 (48:41):
Yeah, well, thank you. Yeah with that as well, Tony.
Speaker 3 (48:44):
Obviously, if you if you always plan then to write saga,
how do you decide how to end book one and
then leave the events for book two. How did you
manage that?
Speaker 4 (48:56):
That's a terrific, terrific question, that was That was the
best question.
Speaker 5 (49:00):
You've got to ask me a better one next. When
I first started book one, I didn't know where I
was going to finish it. I thought I would probably
finish it much later than I did than I did.
I don't really want to give too much away, other
(49:22):
than to say that it was only really about halfway
through book one that I knew where I wanted to
finish it. But I also knew where I wanted to
end book two. I have no idea where I'm going
to end book three. I don't even know whether Alfred
will still be alive. I don't know if his son
will be alive. I have no idea at all as
(49:43):
yet about book three, but I feel confident. But how
that happened, I don't know whether any surprises them.
Speaker 3 (49:53):
Whilst writing book one, that surprised you when you know,
maybe a character to change direction or change course of
action that you thought, do you know what? I didn't
plan that, but I have to keep it in because
it's a great twist or a great you know, change,
or something all.
Speaker 5 (50:11):
Along the way, all along the way, particularly with with
what if it was a show? What you would call
your your female lead Swift, who is Alfred's sister. She
has constantly surprised me the career that the slave girl
have had. As soon as you give a slave the
(50:38):
possibility of running away will then the possibilities are endless,
aren't they? If you if you have a viking in
Orlander and you suddenly thought does he want actually to
be the hairy asked murderer that he has been all
his life? Or does he want to go in a
different direction again? As soon as you ask yourself that
(50:58):
there are limitless pot possibilities ahead of you. And I
suppose that's really what this whole thing of characters demanding
the direction in which they should go. Once you've had
that inkling of an idea, your brain just goes h
like that. And that's that constant hanging. Is how my
saga has been created.
Speaker 4 (51:22):
Is this?
Speaker 3 (51:23):
Obviously you've got the idea for three books, But have
you got any ideas for other novels where you'd want
to maybe deviate into a completely different world.
Speaker 5 (51:34):
I'm sure I have, but I don't want to look
at that part of myself yet. I really you know,
I'm seventy nine. I would like to make sure that
I do write the entire trilogy while I can still
find my way out of a room. I don't want
to do what a lot of people do, which is
(51:55):
to write a couple of books and then, you know,
write a spine novel before you come back at.
Speaker 4 (52:02):
The trilogy. Is my ambition at the moment.
Speaker 3 (52:05):
And with you mentioned as well, Sorry, Chris, I was
going to say, with you mentioned in your relationship obviously
with Laura and the fact that she's a very famous
writer and you know, writes on a regular basis as well,
has it ever crossed your mind or the conversation to
maybe do something together in the future.
Speaker 5 (52:24):
We have a very very strong and time relationship. We've
spoken to each other about three times to day. We
taught the grandchildren how to play poker last night. We
are always doing things together.
Speaker 4 (52:43):
We always have.
Speaker 5 (52:45):
I don't think the idea of writing together would hold
any attraction to either or of us. I think we
love what each other does, and I'm proud of each other.
We don't treading all over that with our big boots.
Speaker 4 (53:01):
You know, we should.
Speaker 5 (53:02):
We share, We share our lives. That's all, what could
be better than that?
Speaker 4 (53:08):
No, exactly.
Speaker 2 (53:10):
Yeah, I was going to ask that, Obviously, you've had
a lot of different sort of elements of your career
and then transitioned into novel writing at this stage, what
advice would you have for someone who really wants to
get into the novel writing aspect of their life, but
they're currently going through different changes before they start that process,
What advice would you give them?
Speaker 4 (53:29):
It would be totally presumptuous of me to ask that.
Speaker 5 (53:34):
All I can say is, when you're really panicking because
you've written seven pages, how the hell are you going
to write another four hundred?
Speaker 4 (53:47):
Believe me, if you stay in there, it'll happen.
Speaker 5 (53:51):
I remember being given a lecture by Damie Edith Evans
when I was a young actor, and she was talking
about building a character, and she said, I'm going to
try and mimic Edith Evans, but it was along the
lines of, if you know what your character is doing
in point A, you don't necessarily need to worry about
(54:13):
point B. What you're doing in point B, and then
maybe what in point C, and then you can go
back to point B and you so you can build
the character that one's probably more is you'll worry about
it less that way, she said, And I think that's
true about writing. You're going to you don't have. Obviously,
(54:34):
the ultimate job is going to be linear. Even with
William Burrows it was linear eventually, but it doesn't have
to be when you're creating it. I know, I absolutely
know what's going to happen in the penultimate chapter of
book two, but I haven't did I haven't put pen
(54:57):
paper at the tournament.
Speaker 4 (54:59):
Only it's so good.
Speaker 3 (55:02):
What do you now know that you'd wish you'd known
before you started writing the trilogy.
Speaker 4 (55:10):
That I could do it? Yeah?
Speaker 2 (55:13):
Nice, Yeah, Okay, we're going to have to wrap up soon,
but obviously we want to say before that even happens,
a massive congratulations for getting this book out there and
getting it ready for release day to day. Congratulations, And
obviously as writers, me and Chris we both know this.
It's known across the industry. You will have amazing reviews
(55:38):
and you will have the odd, random little one possibly,
but we'll on that little one just positives and ignore
the rest, and you're going to have plenty of those.
So yeah, congratulations, and I can't wait for the rest
of the series. To come out and we will certainly
be keeping tabs on that.
Speaker 4 (55:57):
Thanks a lot, great pleasures to talk to you about.
Thank you.
Speaker 3 (56:00):
Yeah, and if you're watching this now, obviously it is
released day, so you can go out and get yourself
a copy of the House of Both.
Speaker 1 (56:06):
Go and buy it.
Speaker 3 (56:08):
It's available in all good bookshops and obviously you can
support your local independent bookshops as well. But yeah, if
you if you read it and you love it, please
just get in touch with the show obviously you can.
Tony's been so hospitable to us on social media and
that as a result, he's having a chat with us
(56:28):
now as well, so you know, maybe maybe message Tony
as well and just say how much you enjoyed it.
Speaker 2 (56:35):
Yes, and if you could hit the like button and
subscribe if you haven't done so, that would be great.
It'll help like minded people find the show and leave
us some comments and follow up questions if you want,
and we'll try to do our best to answer those.
But from us I always say is thank you so
much to Tony, and thank you guys, and as Chris said,
please do pick the book up. But I have a
great weekend and stay safe everybody, and we'll see you
(56:58):
all next show.
Speaker 1 (56:59):
Thank you guys. Fine fine,
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