by P. D. James
Sometimes I am asked whether I am afraid that readers will get murderous ideas from my books. This is not a risk I take seriously: detective novelists are hardly in the business of promoting successful and undetected crime. But I do impose a censorship, sometimes subconscious, on what I write. I can’t read descriptions of torture or watch these scenes on film or television, and I would never describe the explosion of a terrorist bomb in the Underground. This isn’t because terrorists need my imagination to provide them with murderous ideas; it is a superstitious dread that the event might actually happen and I would never afterwards be absolutely sure that I hadn’t contributed to the horror.
I very seldom describe the act of murder, but make no apology for describing the dead victim realistically, and indeed vividly. The moment in a detective story when the body is discovered is one of horror and high drama, and the reader should experience both. I always describe the scene through the eyes of the character in the novel who discovers the body, and the scene is often most effective when that character is herself or himself innocent. The scene in A Taste for Death where the bodies of the ex-Minister of the Crown and the tramp are incongruously yoked in death in the vestry of a church in Paddington provides that contrast which, I think, is so effective in detective fiction, between horror and normality, evil and goodness. The fact that the bodies are discovered by Miss Wharton and Darren adds to the horror. In the description I repeat the word “blood” again and again because it was this all-pervasive redness which suffused Miss Wharton’s mind as it did her retina. In Devices and Desires, however, the body of Hilary Robarts is discovered by Adam Dalgliesh walking along the shore at nightfall. The description is analytical, cool, and Dalgliesh’s response after the initial shock is always that of a professional detective.
All this is rather removed from the subject of today’s talk. I have given myself quite a lot to think about; I am not sure whether the audience found it equally interesting.
MONDAY, 15TH DECEMBER
To Westminster for a meeting in Church House of the Liturgical Commission. I don’t think I am particularly useful on the Commission, to which I was appointed by Archbishop Robert Runcie shortly before he retired. I enjoy the meetings I am able to get to, but the detailed work of revision is largely done in small groups. I like my fellow members, who tolerate my theological ignorance with Christian charity, but they are, of course, concerned to write or rewrite liturgy and my interest as a Vice-President of the Prayer Book Society is in attempting to preserve the treasure we have.
The Commission generates more paper than almost any other committee on which I have sat. The highly experienced Secretary, David Hebblethwaite, copes manfully, but my filing-cabinet drawer, which Joyce has labelled “God,” contains more bulging files than there are on any other subject. The bureaucracy of the Church of England would be terrifying if it were efficient.
The Church of England hasn’t shown much interest in or respect for its rich heritage of literature during the last decades and some parish priests, many of whom can’t cope with Cranmerian prose, would point out that their concerns lie elsewhere than in preserving what they see as an archaic and irrelevant liturgy. What surprises me is the neglect of the King James Bible and the Book of Common Prayer by academics and its absence from the A-level English syllabus. Even for people uninterested in or unconvinced by Cranmer’s reformation theology, his Prayer Book is one of the great glories of English literature. It is difficult, too, to understand how students can read Shakespeare or view with understanding some of the greatest paintings in our galleries without some knowledge of the Authorized Version of the Bible or Tyndale’s translation on which it is based. I have been told by friends who teach English at universities that they have to give a short course in basic Christianity to some of their English students before some books of the canon are comprehensible.
In his magisterial biography of Thomas Cranmer, published in 1996, Diarmid MacCulloch said that Cranmer is among “a select band of Tudor writers, from Tyndale to Shakespeare, who set English on its future course” and that “millions who have never heard of Cranmer or of the muddled heroism of his death have echoes of his words in their minds.” I wonder how long those words and cadences will, in fact, echo. I must resist paranoia, but it is sometimes difficult not to believe that there are people with a more sinister purpose than the neglect of two of the nation’s most seminal books. If you want to destroy a country’s traditions and soften it up for a culture you personally find more to your liking, there is no better way to begin than by an attack on its language and literature.
WEDNESDAY, 24TH DECEMBER
It was on this day in 1979 that I retired from the Home Office. The second part of my service was less satisfying than the first. I was transferred to the Children’s Department, whose responsibilities were then being reallocated to the Department of Health and Social Security, and then to the Criminal Policy Department, where I was concerned with juvenile courts and the law relating to juvenile offenders. The Department’s chief concern was the Children and Young Person’s Act 1969 which revised the law relating to juveniles and set up, among other provisions, the care order. The job of the Civil Service is to help implement Government policy, not to criticize it—and certainly not at my level, of Principal—but it seemed to me that the Act, based, as far as I know, on no research evidence, was mistaken from the beginning. The underlying premise was that any delinquency or serious criminal behaviour in a child or young person is the result of the juvenile’s circumstances and environment. Put this right and all will be well. In serious cases, therefore, the Juvenile Court would have power to place the offender in local authority care where he would receive the loving and responsible guidance and protection which he could expect from a good parent. Children at risk of abuse or ill-treatment could be similarly placed in care if the necessary conditions were satisfied.
The Maria Colwell tragedy, when Maria, under supervision by her local authority, was murdered by her stepfather, had an immediate impact on legislative proposals for strengthening the child protection provisions of the 1959 Act. Ministers announced that it would never be allowed to happen again. It has, of course, happened again, and not infrequently. I feel some sympathy with social workers, who are faced with an appalling dilemma. They are criticized if they leave a child in her home and she is subsequently abused or even murdered; they are criticized if they too readily take her into care. It doesn’t surprise me that they have so often got it wrong; what does surprise me is the extraordinary and irrational optimism with which Parliament and the profession assumed they could get it right.
The years have shown how misguided the Act was. The official view put forward by the DHSS at the time and endorsed by ministers generally, was that any defects in its working were due to lack of resources. Of course there were not adequate resources; there never are. All governments are fond of legislating for what they see as social reforms well in advance of providing the necessary funds for implementing the changes. But the main problem was not lack of money, it was the lack of skill and experience. The new local authority Social Services were formed in the wake of the Seebohm and Redcliffe-Maud reorganizations. There was to be one integrated training for social workers, who were presumed to be able to undertake any aspect of the work. Inexperienced young people imbued with the latest socio-economic theories were faced with some of the most intractable problems of child delinquency or child abuse. It is small wonder that both the supervision orders and the care orders were largely ineffective. We have now had some years of experience of what local authority residential care has meant for thousands of deprived, unhappy young people.
I decided that I should leave on Christmas Eve at the age of fifty-nine years and six months. I was not due to receive my lump sum and to start my pension until my sixtieth birthday on 3rd August, but the success of Innocent Blood made early retirement possible. I had given the usual goodbye party earlier in the week and the office was very quiet and almost empt
y when I cleared the last drawer, washed my tea mug, packed it away in my tote-bag and closed the door for the last time. They had been twelve good years. I had gained experience which had been invaluable in writing Death of an Expert Witness and Innocent Blood, and was to prove equally valuable in future. I left with considerable respect for this much-misunderstood department and I had made more than one lasting friend. My life as a bureaucrat was now at an end and it was time to go.
DIARY 1998
January
THURSDAY, 8TH JANUARY
I spent today completing my packing for the American tour which begins tomorrow, and tackling the bulging “Pending” file with Joyce. I had a telephone interview with the Dayton Daily News, advance publicity for my arrival there on 16th January. Dayton, Ohio, has not been included before in any of my American tours, but I have what is in effect a fan club there, largely due to the friendship and the vigorous support of a local journalist, Rosamond Young. Rosamond has persuaded my publishers, Alfred A. Knopf, that a visit to her town would be well worth the detour; knowing her, I’ve no doubt that it will be.
Perhaps the greatest change in publishing since my girlhood has been the death—sometimes dramatic, sometimes after a protracted period of ailing—of small individual publishing houses and the emergence of conglomerates, many of them international firms with wide and varying interests of which publishing is only a part. Publishing is, indeed, in danger of becoming an international monopoly with serious consequences not only for writers, but for the future of literature. A second great change, which has been strongly influenced by the first, is in the marketing of books. Before the war if you produced a new work of fiction, it would, if accepted, be published and, if the writer were well-known or lucky, reviewed and discreetly advertised. There might be journalistic features in newspapers and magazines and if the book were considered scandalous, as was The Well of Loneliness, the consequent furore would keep journalists and readers in a state of profitable indignation for weeks. A new novel was like a boat: the frail craft would be launched and left to breast the waves of public taste and the winds of critical acclaim or disdain either to sink or swim, without much help from the publisher. Some publishers, indeed, seemed to consider their imprint so prestigious that writers were fortunate to be published by them; it would be unreasonable for the author to expect his publisher actively to sell the book or to concern himself overmuch with such sordid commercial concerns as sales figures or promotion.
Nowadays a new novel, particularly one which looks as if it has a chance of getting on to a national or international bestseller list, is promoted, packaged and sold like a new perfume. In this process the author is expected to take an active part, notably through author tours. To some this is a pleasure, to others an ordeal, while some few resolutely decline to participate. How far this hinders their sales is, I think, open to question. I can never find any reliable research on the profitability of author tours but, as publishers are still prepared to spend thousands of pounds arranging them, they must consider the time and effort worthwhile.
Sometimes my family and friends say to me before a major tour, “Why do you do it? Surely you don’t need to?” Part of the answer, I think, is my always feeble wish to be accommodating, particularly as I have a personal affection for my publishers both at home and in the USA. There is also the assurance that I shall travel in extreme comfort, be looked after all the way, shall meet friends from previous tours and probably enjoy new experiences. But I think the chief reason is the pleasure of meeting my readers face-to-face. Readers of crime fiction are remarkably loyal, knowledgeable and enthusiastic. I have never faced an audience before a signing without a sense of being among personal friends.
I have learned now to pace myself; I know, too, what is and what is not possible. A few years ago I made it plain that I wanted the minimum of socializing on tour; indeed, that what I liked best was to go back to my hotel at the end of the day, have room service and relax. This was difficult for the hospitable Americans to understand. They hated the thought that their author was spending the evening alone. But it really was impossible to cope with a day of publicity and follow it with a party in which the same questions—“Where do you get your ideas? When did you know you wanted to be a writer? Do you use a word-processor?”— are reiterated over the wine or the dinner table.
I also early laid it down that I wanted only two press interviews at a time. Ten or so years ago I was on my USA tour in San Francisco when I had one press interview from 9 to 10, another from 10 to 11, and the third from 11 to 12. Each journalist had brought a tape recorder to place between us, and what I endured was three hours of continuous interrogation. Until that experience I had always in my naivety found it difficult to understand why suspects questioned by the police confessed when they were innocent. I now know how psychologically distressing, indeed traumatic, interrogation can be. But at least, had I been a police suspect it is doubtful whether the questioning would have lasted for three virtually uninterrupted hours. So now press interviews are interspersed with television or radio. I find the last two much easier, indeed often enjoyable. The other person is actively participating in the discussion and we share a joint wish to make the broadcast or programme interesting to the viewer or listener and satisfying for ourselves.
I have seen great cities which I would not otherwise have visited, have received much generosity and kindness and have shared much laughter. I imagine that I shall continue to undertake major writer tours as long as I continue to write and have the strength. But this method of selling books, promoting the writer rather as if he or she were a pop star, seems a curious, even a farcical, concomitance. I note that today a new writer who is young and physically attractive starts with a considerable initial advantage. He or she will be a hit on the publicity trail; the image is pro-motable and acceptable. There is, too, a curious development of which Swan, a novel supposedly written by the model Naomi Campbell, is an example. We live in an age which, despite its apparent sophistication and its technological advancement, is remarkable for silliness and gullibility. What can be the possible interest of reading a book reputedly written by Naomi Campbell unless she has in fact written it?
Soon we shall get to the stage where a bestseller will be written by a computer with all the necessary ingredients of sex and violence fed into the machine. The publisher will then find a young man or woman with a fashionable face, appropriate body measurements, and a sensational emotional and sexual life, and place his or her name on the title page. I suppose the book could then be sold on the Internet and would no doubt cause a literary sensation.
In the meantime there still seems to be considerable interest in an elderly grandmother who writes traditional English detective fiction. And so I embark tomorrow on the major American tour, which will take me to twelve cities in nineteen days.
MONDAY, 19TH JANUARY
I arrived in Dallas yesterday from Pittsburgh, am here for two nights, and shall leave on Tuesday for Houston. I am still in good health and spirits after ten hectic days. I arrived in Boston on 9th January and then continued to New York, Washington, Chicago, Dayton and Pittsburgh. I have seen little of any of these cities, except for the interiors of television and radio studios, bookshops, and the venues for talks and lectures. But all the experiences have been good so far, with large and enthusiastic audiences, sometimes numbering as many as 400. This is less a tribute to my drawing power or popularity than an indication of cultural differences between our two nations. Even if it were rumoured that Graham Greene had risen from the dead, I doubt whether we would get audiences of this size in England to listen to a writer.
I was glad Knopf included Dayton in the tour. Roz Young more than fulfilled her promise; my signing and talk at Books and Company was more like being welcomed home after a long absence than a first visit, and it was interesting to spend the night at a hotel which wasn’t five-star and where I could meet and eat with a cross-section of Americans.
It is a truism
to say that Texas is large, but it is this immensity, the sense of space stretching out, flat, featureless, limitless, sky and land indistinguishable, which strikes me every time I travel in the state, inducing a faint agoraphobia. I feel the absence of water, of sea or lake or river, like a parched throat. The Dallas skyline could be almost any American city. Approaching from the airport, the roads curve on their high T-shaped struts of concrete. The exit signs point to different communities, sometimes disconcertingly called cities. Most of these seem to have grown up, or rather been spontaneously brought into being, since my last visit. The city itself, indeed, seems the creation of real estate; nothing here is huddled together, space is there for the taking. But how could one live in any of these communities without a car? Unable to drive, for me it would be too like living in an open prison with fellow inmates of the same class, background and income; every physical need catered for admirably and often with imagination but in an intimacy more circumscribed than solitary confinement.
The hotel had a notice to say that it was illegal to bring in concealed weapons. Does this mean that loaded guns held at the ready are acceptable? An interview in the morning with a journalist from the Dallas Morning News was loosely based on a former Vanity Fair interview which has surfaced often during this tour. The interviewer, like many others, asked about Princess Diana. Why wouldn’t the Queen grieve? I was tempted to point out that, had I been the Queen, my grieving, though sincere, would not have been excessive. Instead I said that not everyone showed grief by pinning teddy-bears and flowers to the railings of public parks. We then went on for some reason to talk about Myra Hindley. Had I visited her in prison? No. Why not? I replied that, since there was nothing I needed to say to her, or presumably she to me, and nothing I could usefully do for her, a visit would be too much like morbid voyeurism.