A Chat in the Garden with ... Paul Magrs!

Christmas has come to the tranquil walled garden of my blog. A string of rainbow bulbs are winking on the weathered wall and a robin is eyeing the bird feeder, and I’ve a very special visitor over for hot chocolate in the gazebo: the acclaimed Paul Magrs, author of the Brenda & Effie spooky mysteries and the wild adventures of the Doctor and Mrs Wibbsey (which begin tonight on Radio 4 Extra!), and creator of Iris Wildthyme (transtemporal adventuress extraordinaire) and overall one of my very favourite writers. Even his blog is a delight...

His latest novel might be the perfect read for Christmas: a snowy winter for New York booklovers, young lovers and art lovers – and vampires! I’m very proud to welcome you, Paul – stamp the snow from your boots and pull up a tartan blanket.

How are you? Have you stopped work for Christmas yet?

Thanks, Nick. It’s very nice to be invited! I’d heard you had a garden here. I’m just stopping by for a little while… That’s how this whole year has been, for me, it seems. Stopping by briefly and catching up with people… making cameo appearances here and there.

I haven’t stopped yet – but I know when I will. It’ll be the 23rd of December. There are two main things that I must get finished before then. One is the final chapters of my second Iris novel, Wildthyme Beyond… and then the other is a script for a new thing that needs a two hour long script… but I can’t say what it is yet. But it’s a brand new thing, featuring a new range of characters and mysteries that I’ve been waiting and wanting to write about for a little while… So it’s just a couple of thousand words a day for the next three weeks or so… Though, of course, the festivities are already beginning…

All the necromantic fun of 666 Charing Cross Road begins with Liza Bathory receiving a particularly odd book in the post. Was this inspired by good or bad experiences you have had with book buying off the internet?

I don’t think I’ve had any bad experiences in that line! Poor Liza ends up with an old book that just happens to contain the quintessence of all evil… and that must be a fairly rare event. All my bibliomancing has led me to the nice and the good; or to the rare and the nostalgic… I remember using the internet when I was first aware of it, in order to find myself a copy of the Eric Houghton YA novel, Steps out of Time that I had loved so much at school in 1980. Just a little search and soon an ex-library copy was winging its way to me for an exorbitant price…

In more recent times, I did a search for Jon de Cles – the author of a comic fantasy novel I have loved for almost twenty years, The Particolored Unicorn. It was like tracking down a mythic beast… and there he was, with a blog and a sequel to the book about to be published. He even sent me an advance copy by email! Amazing!

Then when I started my own blog in 2009 it put me in touch with readers of all kinds. And you trust that your blogging about reading will draw you into the orbit of clever, friendly souls, who’ll leave comments and discuss stuff… and be able to answer seemingly impossible questions you’ve harboured for years. Such as my impossible question to you, not quite two years ago – about the books I remembered from being 11, for which I had no titles nor authors. And somehow you came up with details on both – The Captain Hook Affair by Humphrey Carpenter and A Billion for Boris by Mary Rodgers. I still find it incredible you did that – after just a few stumbling bits of description from me.

And that’s what book-buying online has been like… Filching things like The Jon Pertwee Book of Monsters and Purnell’s Disney Storybook from the back of someone’s unloved collection…


I suppose that's one aspect of this novel - we might be buying from this place on the other side of the world - but why are they selling what they're selling, and what past do these books have?

Liza copes rather well, though. She’s another one of the women of ‘a certain age’ who take lead roles in your work, along with Brenda and Effie, Mrs Wibbsey, even Iris, ostensibly. Is this coincidence?

There’s no coincidence about it at all… I come from a Northern family – a matriarchy from the North East of England. In our family, all the men gathered to watch football silently in the living room – and all the women gossiped in the kitchen over tea and cake. I sat in the kitchen and listened to their tall, tall tales. And I prefer to write about larger-than-life characters and women who talk a lot – because that’s what I’m used to. I can still hear their voices.

666 isn’t strictly a ‘Christmas read’, but it does feature the festive period heavily. Are there any other Christmassy stories of the undead that you know of, and enjoy?

I’ve always loved stories with a lot of snow and spooky stuff in them. I remember being entranced by the Disney cartoon, ‘Lonesome Ghosts’ which always seemed very wintry to me. I had a Viewmaster Camera as a very young kid, and you could run the cartoon backwards and forwards and at all different speeds…

My favourite kids’ books ever have very snowy interludes… The Box of Delights, Carrie’s War, The Dark is Rising, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe and The Wind in the Willows. I think it has to do with the contrasts and extremes – the freezing outdoors and the danger – juxtaposed with cosy, homely interiors. The nostalgia of making for home through heavy weather and impossible adventures… Plus, also, the sound distortion when there’s thick snow on the ground… the way echoes are muffled and everything sounds so immediate and intimate… that’s a very scary moment, when you realise the world has telescoped to just you in the snowy woods in a dwindling pool of moonlight…

You obviously have a powerfully visual imagination and your website has a few of your drawings. Have you always drawn like this and has it ever shaped your writing?

Yes, it has done, I think. I do less drawing now than I used to… but I do think in visual terms, of making a scene work - and the progression of set-piece to set-piece. And I like to steep scenes in colours – I think I respond very emotionally to colours. I have to know what the curtains and wallpaper is like when I’m writing a scene… And I really do see the faces of my characters as they talk.

Here in the imaginary garden of my blog, it never stops snowing all through December. What do you think to my snowman?

I think he’s marvellous. But… hang on! He’s hopping over the fence…! Should he be doing that?

Oh dear...

Tonight on Radio 4 Extra, they begin broadcasting your adventures for Tom Baker’s Doctor Who – and I'm a big fan of these. What sort of experience do you try and give your listeners with these? And can we have some more next year please?

Oh, thanks for that! I’ve loved doing all three of these seasons of stories. Each year I spend the first six months writing and rewriting, and working with my amazing script editor and commissioning editor, Michael Stevens. Each year we have an over-arching storyline (Evil hornets from space! A demon in multiple disguises through history! A sacred magic serpent egg that the Doctor attempts to steal away and hide!)… and we slot five independent stories within the overall shape. I love the way Audiogo and the brilliant team who’ve worked together so successfully simply go with the flow and bring life to my ideas… like this year – with our Russian Revolution in outer space; our Victorian ghost tale about the boy with the paper head… the Arabian Nights adventure that happens inside a Faberge egg… and then the tale of how the whole of Hexford Village gets whisked off into space…

It’s a kind of phantasmagorical, macabre take on Doctor Who – fairy tale horror in lots of different voices. And presiding over it all – like the lord of misrule himself – is the legendary Tom Baker. My Doctor since childhood – approaching the role and these adventures as if he’s setting off as Doctor Who for the very first time. It’s all been bliss.

And as for 2012… well, I can’t say anything yet… Just wait and see!

Here’s a question I’ve asked all my guests in the garden. Do you have a big dream and if so, has it changed since you were a child?

My big dream has always been to write exactly what I want to write and get it out into the world. I wanted to write amazing adventure stories featuring characters I love. I’ve stuck to that bloody-mindedly from childhood into adulthood and now… and I’m still hanging on. I hope I haven’t sold out at all. I can honestly say that every project and book that I’ve worked on has been exactly what I wanted most to be doing at any one time. I’ve never had the vast popular success that others have… but then, at the same time, I’ve never been able to sit on my laurels and get complacent, either. I’ve had to fight for every little thing I’ve put out there in the world. But having said all that… it’s tough being told all the time that you’re ‘niche’, ‘troublesomely unique’, or… ‘quirky.’ So – sooner or later – it’d be nice to break through to a bigger audience. And that’s where the dream is still pointing.

Since this garden disobeys the usual rules governing reality, if you could invite anybody living or dead or unreal to join us, who would it be...?

I’d like my best friends here. Is this soppy? It doesn’t matter if it is. So much of life is about trying to organise get-togethers with friends. They’re all split up and floating about around the world… and sometimes you can snag some time with them. Like I said at the start… it’s all about trying to find time to catch up with each other – properly. So – if this garden is really magical, and a lovely still spot like it seems – I’d like a nice long get-together with my friends. Oh, only the nice, loyal, proper friends. And they know who they are!

Without intending to, my blog has developed a tendency for old kids books, ghost stories, and magic realism. What can you recommend that’s nothing like them?

Oh dear! They’re my favourite things, too. But let’s see… outside of those, what do I love? Something resolutely un-magical, un-childike…aagghh! I don’t know! I’m not sure I do love any fiction that doesn’t have a bit of those elements to it… Oh, here. Look – Truman Captote’s ‘In Cold Blood’ – which is bleak and exhausting and horrible. And one of the most marvellous books I’ve read.

Do you think a particular book has changed your life?

Going right back, I’d have to say Alice’s Adventures… changed everything. When I was seven and had to go back and forth at weekends to my father’s family on access weekends, there would be these terrible scenes in the car. He was a policeman and he would effectively interrogate me, every Saturday morning in lay-by’s on the route to his new flat. He wanted to know who I loved the most – him or my Mam. He ranted and raved and wept about her and about the divorce and how he hated her. He wanted to know every detail of what was going on at home and what had been said about him. It was all this adult mind-game stuff going on… and I was learning, at seven, about how childish and destructive adults could be. But I remember having Lewis Carroll with me one time… in a splendid hardbacked scarlet copy. And I kept my head down and kept reading. He was wanting me to do boy’s stuff like watch football matches and then go and play the wretched game… but I wanted nothing to do with any of that. That was one of the most powerful, early senses I had of a book being a complete escape from the outside world. More than that – sitting in his car in the passenger seat – with him all red in the face and yelling – it was the book as a barricade.

What’s the first book after childhood that you really, really loved?

My first boyfriend made me read my first novels by Armistead Maupin and Anne Tyler. I loved ‘Tales of the City’ and ‘If Morning Ever Comes.’ I went on, quite quickly, to read everything by them. ‘Maybe the Moon’ and ‘Saint Maybe’ by those two authors respectively are two of the books I love the most.

When you read, what voice do you hear? Or are you deep in the action of the novel? Are these just things I wonder about…?

I love wondering about things like that, too. I’ve always heard my own voice inside my head, reading – and then imagining different voices for dialogue, I think. And so I read pretty slowly as a result – with everything unwinding in my head in real time…

And do you have a particular place or position you like to read in?

In the summer I love reading at the bottom of the garden in the Beach House – on the bed settee with Fester the cat lying asleep on my chest. Because I sit quite still when I’m writing or reading, Fester comes to sit on my lap wherever I am around the house. I have a chair in my tiny working room where we will both curl up to read. Right beside the ‘To Be Read’ bookcase is the best place to be. Comfy – with cat – and no end of books in sight.

Where do you get recommendations from?

Close friends, blogs, reviews. The usual places. But the people and blogs I listen to are ones that I think are ‘real’ readers… that is, not those over-excited about the hype and the shiny-shiny lure of the new and the much-trumpeted. You have to pick your way so carefully through the minefield of recommendations everywhere… and also, you have to watch out for acting on a recommendation – and then, if you dislike what someone has loved – breaking it to them gently enough… and not getting in a row about it. I love discussions about all that stuff – but you have to watch out for hurt feelings, I think. One thing I dislike in all the reviewy/ hypey / bloggy stuff is the degree of amazement and rapture over huge commercial success... it’s kind of X Factor thinking – when the sheer size of the pound and dollar signs wipe out any real thought or opinion…

What are you reading at the moment, today I mean?

I’m bang in the middle of Sue Townsend’s ‘Queen Camilla’ – which is a lovely satirical fantasy about Britain from five years ago that I’ve only just got round to. It’s about a Britain in which the royal family has been forced to live on a council estate. I loved ‘The Queen and I’, which preceded it, quite a number of years ago. In this sequel, the country has become a nastier, darker, more cynical and paranoid place – which is, of course, entirely true. But in all of that, the warmth and humanity of Townsend’s characters shines through. She’s made me feel empathy for the Royals!

In the old crumbly red brick wall of this garden is a wooden door painted green. It opens onto anywhere in all the world that you could wish. Where would you like to go?

The Jardin du Luxembourg in Paris in July. Reading under the trees with a glass of pink wine. Which is – I’ve just remembered – one of my other favourite places to read.

Paul, thank you so much for taking time in the middle of Wildthyme Beyond to come by for a chat. Mind how you go, now - I'll lend you an umbrella - and have a very merry Christmas! (666 Charing Cross Road is available from Headline Books.)