Singing For Mrs Pettigrew

"The title story, Singing for Mrs Pettigrew , is about a very precious place to me. This is my growing-up place, a little village called Bradwell in Essex. It’s fiction in one sense, but the background is absolutely not. I did live in a house in this village. I did go and meet an old lady who lived in a railway carriage down in the marsh. They did come and build an atomic power station in my village which is what finally drove us away from it. It was all there in my head—I simply wove it differently, and wove other colours into it. “The stories are already there in your head. You don’t have to invent so much as remember.” It really is to say to children you don’t start a story with just a blank sheet. You begin with what you know, with what you care about. The stories are already there in your head. You don’t have to invent so much as remember. It’s funny. Once you start digging in your memory, you find other nuggets. The best way of putting it is that if you don’t read—if you don’t develop the skill early on—your life is poorer for it. There’s so much you will not know or understand about yourself and about the world around you. You will have less ability to understand the point of view of others. A child that does not read will find it very hard to understand what another person is, how another boy or girl sees the world differently, or how an older person sees the world. If you are reading about people who live in different countries or other times, you have to make this great leap of imagination. The wonderful thing is that you’re not forced to do it. You’re enticed to do it by the story that you’re reading. Coming out of the book, you understand the world a great deal better. Support Five Books Five Books interviews are expensive to produce. If you're enjoying this interview, please support us by donating a small amount . For a child growing up, to begin to comprehend the complexity of how it is to be ‘other’ is enormously important. More important now than ever. It is not only vital for the psychological development of a child, but also for that child’s understanding of the world. Yes, mentors. The two that are closest to me in terms of the effect they had on me. Robert Louis Stevenson from when I was really quite young. And you get to know very quickly if you read Kidnapped or you read Treasure Island that this man has spent an awful lot of time walking in the countryside. He knows it very well and he is using all his understanding of landscape and how you hide in landscape. “I still think Stevenson is the greatest writer that’s ever lived, really” I think of people like Ted Hughes — he walked the same paths I walk every day, just down the road from where I live. Henry Williamson also walked the same river, and there are still otters there. Robert Louis Stevenson’s writing had a huge effect on me growing up, as did Enid Blyton’s. Blyton is somewhat frowned upon today. As a boy, I loved her because she made adventure fun. I wasn’t a great reader at all. I went from comics to Enid Blyton to Robert Louis Stevenson and really didn’t do much more than that. The great thing about Robert Louis Stevenson is that he understood character, landscape, motivation, and relationships. I immediately realized I was in the hands of a master, even as a young person. I still think Stevenson is the greatest writer that’s ever lived, really."