My OBE-winning husband
It is much too hot. It was 91 in my garden this afternoon, according to my maximum-minimum thermometer, when the hellhounds and I had panted back to the cottage from the mews in what should have been the cool of the evening but was reading 86 on the as-it-happens thermometer. Note that both the max/min and the as-it-happens are in the shade.*
I have blown what few unmelted brain cells I had available today on PEGASUS, so how fortunate that the pertinent issue of one of the Hampshire newspapers that interviewed Peter arrived today. And yes, I have already phoned the journalist Amanda Barnes to ask permission to quote her friendly and positive article on my blog. She was amused. She also said yes.**
‘A tall, elderly, bony, beaky, wrinkled sort of fellow with a lot of untidy grey hair and a weird hooting voice***’ is how Peter Dickinson describes himself.
But I think this author, who was appointed OBE this month, is selling himself short.
With two Whitbread Book Awards, two Carnegie Awards (and shortlisted nine times!), two Phoenix Awards, on the shortlist of three for the first children’s laureate, and over 50 books under his belt, Peter Dickinson is at the top of his game. Even at 81 years old.
His ‘game’ is literature. Whether it be crime novels and science fiction or children’s writing and poetry, Peter has excelled at them all. His achievements will be recognised as he goes to Buckingham Palace later this year for his appointment as OBE.
‘I never “became” an author,’ said Peter. ‘I was never taught at school how to write a story. I had my last English lesson aged 11.’
. . . Peter was clearly bound for a career in writing even though it seemed unlikely when he turned up for his first job interview covered in blood and dirt after being run over by a tram. He got the job and wrote for Punch magazine for 17 years.
His inspiration for writing ‘comes from nowhere’ as he says. But perhaps you could be forgiven for thinking it comes from everywhere when you listen to his anecdotes of a funny looking history teacher who waddled into his life and set off his fascination for ancient history or his tales of playing with baboons in his school playground where he grew up in Africa.
But like all great storytellers it is not what has happened to Peter, but the way he tells it that translates into captivating literature.
“My first book came from a dream,” he explained. “I had a nightmare and I lay awake telling it over to myself in order to put the story to sleep. I found myself telling an interesting story!”
The dream became The Weathermonger, a children’s story. It was published in 1968 with Skin Deep, his first adult book, which won the CWA’s Gold Dagger while the other became a television series.
Since then he has gone on to write over 50 books spanning 40 years. Peter’s writing still appeals to readers young and old and he attributes this to setting his novels historically.
‘I have set books in the past which means I do not have to keep up with the way more modern people talk!’ he said modestly.
But his novels are not just set back to his own time as a child but often set in quite different worlds. Take for example one of his most accomplished works The Kin—a set of four stories about homo sapiens travelling through Africa 50,000 years ago.
Peter certainly inhabits a different world to most people. With a thoughtful gaze and a cheeky glint in his transparent blue eyes†, it is clear that whatever daydream he is playing out in his mind is far more interesting than what you or I might see.††
Indeed, sharing his vagabond thoughts was one of the only ways to keep his children quiet on long car journeys many years ago when his family regularly travelled between Hampshire and London.
‘I used to tell the children stories in the car to stop the boys fighting in the back seat,’ he remembered. ‘There was a particular pub we passed that was when I started the story. That way it gave me a few moments to think of something!’
Peter has clearly been an inspirational father to his four children (two daughters and two sons), two of whom work in writing or publishing.
The author is married to his second wife the American fantasy writer Robin McKinley with whom he occasionally collaborates.†††
He spends his days as a ‘seriously keen gardener’, playing bridge and, of course, writing.
‘What I would like is to be shortlisted for the Carnegie one more time,’ he said teasingly about his next ambition. ‘That would make it a round ten!’
* * *
* Please do not feel compelled to write in to say, It’s 111 in the shade here! 91 is way too hot for me. I used to tell Peter that if he lived in a two-up-and-two-down on a paved-over housing estate in the city^ I’d’ve still married him, and I meant it. I’m not at all sure I could say that I’d’ve married him if he lived somewhere that it routinely hit 111 degrees Fahrenheit in the shade.
^ There would indeed have been certain advantages if I’d never discovered gardening. . . . two rose catalogues arrived last week. Moan.
** I’ve also made a few tactful corrections of howlers. There may be more that I missed. Or felt came under the heading ‘oh well, interviews are like that’.
*** I have described him to American friends as sounding like he just stepped out of a BBC costume drama.
† Okay, I’ll let the cheeky glint pass, but transparent blue eyes???
†† Speak for yourself.
††† It would be less occasional if she would get her butt in gear.
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