William Nicholson's Blog

Lottery living

I’ve never played the lottery. Secretly, I’ve prided myself on the fact that whatever rewards have come my way have been earned by hard work. So it comes as a small shock to realise that I play a kind of lottery every day. This happens without my conscious intention, but it underpins everything I do. More than that, it makes the process of living possible to me. It works like this: at any given time I’m nursing a secret hope, exactly like the hope of the lottery player that his numbers will come up, but my secret hope relates to me alone. Most commonly it’s to do with the work I’m engaged on: my film script will become the basis of an Oscar-winning film; my novel will be acclaimed; my television series will be the talk of everyone I know. As projects come and go, I shift my secret hope from one to the next, juggling all the time to keep open the possibility that my life will be transformed, at some unspecified time in the future. I think this is one of the reasons I work on so many projects at once. They can’t all die on me at the same time, can they? My actual experience is that most projects do either collapse before completion, or fail after completion, so my spread-betting makes sense. For example, right now I’m at different stages on a film project for a brilliant director; a ten-part TV series; a novel; and most embryonic and distant of all, a plan to write and direct a small film of my own. These projects may all die, but they can’t die soon. I reckon I’ve got at least two years of hope bottled up here.

Then there’s all the lesser beacons that I set shining on the path ahead: we’re planning to refurbish our London base, and I love to picture how it will be when it’s done. Christmas is coming, and all the children will be home. In January there’s skiing. In July there’s Corsica. And in the meantime, each day reaches out some little gleam of delight: the glass of wine in the evening, the sinking into my bed to sleep at night. All of which is commonplace, until I start to see the pattern running through my behaviour.

These are all childish longings for what’s not yet come. At no point do I seek my delight in the present moment.

As soon as one of these anticipated rewards arrives, I’m reaching ahead again; not exactly wanting something better, it’s not greed; but I have become addicted to living in hope. There’s something ridiculous about this. I’m now undeniably in the later stages of my life, but here I am, still acting like an eager teenager, for whom the best is all to come. When do I give up? When do I say, This is it, this is my life, it’s a good life, and it’s happening to me right now? When do I let myself off the treadmill?

I’ve always loved the Nunc dimittis, that moment when Simeon, who has kept himself alive until he finally sees Jesus, takes him in his arms and says, ‘Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace according to thy word.’ That’s a moment to live for, the moment when you tell yourself, There’s no more. I can be let go. I’m not on the way to somewhere else. I’m here. Now.

So I’m tired of the conditional life, the not-yet life, the waiting on the lottery draw. But I’m addicted to it. It’s the engine that drives me. How do other people get from day to day? As my friends age with me I want to ask them: how do you do it? After retirement, after the children have left home, after the phone has stopped ringing, after the emails no longer fill the screen, what happens?

This, by the way, is one of the main themes of my next novel, where it becomes known as the ‘half-death’. One life ends, but you live on, perhaps for decades. Doing what? Living a real life for the first time?

I love the evening prayer from The Book of Common Prayer:

‘O Lord, support us all the day long, until the shadows lengthen and the evening comes, and the busy world is hushed, and the fever of life is over, and our work is done. Then in thy mercy grant us a safe lodging, and a holy rest, and peace at the last.’

The joy of righteousness

Talking with my son recently – he works in the field of international development – we turned to the current phenomenon of young Western men being drawn to fight for ISIS. I put forward a view I’d read in a recent article, that this could be seen as a form of narcissism, a means of gaining attention from a world that marginalises them. My son suggested another view. It’s all about the joy of being right, he said, and everyone else being wrong. As soon as he said it, I found myself agreeing. It’s a much under-rated drive, this need to be right. It manifests itself in tiny ways, whenever we have an argument about a fact and turn to Google for the answer. If the little screen proves us right, a tiny charge of validation thrills through us. When we get into discussions most often our hidden objective isn’t the discovery of the truth, but a demand that we be seen to be right. Expand this small pleasure to a whole way of life, and you get a religion. A religion offers answers and makes demands that many, maybe most, others don’t accept as true – and in this lies its seductive power. In the days when I was a believer, I was most happy among non-believers, because my faith made me distinct, and their scorn made me proud. It’s a heady cocktail, being both different and quite sure that you’re right. Opposition only feeds your certainty. Opposition that threatens you with death is the most intoxicating of all.

So what’s to be done? It seems to me that we must add to, and make more subtle, the stories of what’s going on. At present we’re offered two stories: that ‘terrorists’ are being groomed, or brain-washed, and we must find and shut down these sinister masterminds; or that ISIS has lured so many through skilful PR, most of all with videos of beheadings, which excites young men who are attracted to the glamour of violence.  Both stories may be true: their limitation is that they are both other-stories. They’re about the behaviour of others, not us. What I sense we need to do is to discover that part of ourselves that could act as these young men act, so that it becomes an us-story. Then, with greater understanding and empathy, we may be better equipped to respond to this frightening new phenomenon.

The us-story is that we have all been drunk on righteousness. We have trumpeted our certainties on racism, or  war, or climate change, or benefit scroungers, or transgender rights, or freedom of information, or vegetarianism. The cause is real, but the rocket-fuel is the conviction of righteousness. A few small steps, and a couple of larger ones, and we could be off to fight to defend our beliefs, and therefore to kill. There’s a terrorist inside each of us. The less power we have in our lives, the more our inner terrorist grows, feeding on resentment and helplessness.

So I guess the answer is empowerment. For most of us, growing older achieves this, in small but sufficient ways. For the young, not yet inured to compromise, their situation can seem desperate. When there’s no way out, you reach for the axe to smash your way out.

I’ve no idea how to empower the disempowered. But I do know it’s not about our immigrant communities, the ones we secretly regard as  aliens-among-us. It’s about all of us. It’s about the values our society embraces, about who we respect and why. It’s about who we celebrate as heroes and role models. It’s about our modes of being right.

At the palace

Yesterday after a fraught rail journey – yet more ‘signalling problems’ on Southern Railways leading to yet more delays – to Buckingham Palace with Virginia and all three children, or grown-ups as they are now. A windy rainy day and a surreal experience. Crossing the forecourt of the palace, my son prompted me to turn and look back. There ran the long line of tall black railings, with the faces of the crowd pressed against them, watching not us but the world we were entering. The sensation of being inside. But strikingly there was no security, no bag checks, no X-rays, no police with guns. Only a rich array of strangely dressed figures – lifeguards in bright silver breastplates, holding long swords; elderly chaps in red with low-crowned top hats; black-clad footmen; grand panjandrums in black with much gold braid and gold spurs; and several versions of military uniform, grey, khaki and blue. The rooms through which we passed were glorious in a completely over-the-top way: immense, very gilt, with huge paintings that slipped out of the memory as soon as seen, more decoration than art, but perfect decoration. This is not a home, not a place of business: it’s a setting. Everything about the palace – this sector of it, I should say; I’ve no doubt there are cosy nooks elsewhere – is designed to frame formal events, and does so brilliantly. In contrast with the extreme grandeur the staff were all friendly and informal. There was no regimentation, only a polite desire to point us in the right direction, together with a shared pleasure in our awestruck response to the scene. It felt as if the staff were in on the joke alongside us, which was delightful.

My family went one way up a wide staircase, I went another, joining the 97 recipients of honours. We were directed into a long room where little removable hooks were attached to our lapels. Here television screens were set up, and water and glasses stood on side tables. A little shyly we talked to each other, fumbling our way towards saying, ‘So what are you being honoured for?’ I met a distinguished chemist, a man from the Ministry of Defence, a man who manages the Royal Cornwall Show, and the founder of a firm of plumbers. My own contribution – being a writer – seemed insubstantial by comparison.

Then a colonel with a handsome humorous face and a wry manner gave us a demonstration of how we were to receive our medals, acting out each step with the help of colleagues. My chemist friend, who had experienced this before, murmured to me that the only tricky part was the walking backwards after your moment was over. Then we were fed through in batches. I came about half way, and so had time to watch on the screens how the first to be honoured conducted themselves. To my surprise, Prince Charles, who was giving the honours, seemed to speak for several minutes to each recipient. How on earth could he know enough about 97 people to manage a coherent conversation? I could see that as each new recipient approached, an aide at his back leant forward to whisper information, but only for a few seconds.

Then it was the turn of my batch to go forward. We were led through the back of the huge ballroom where the ceremony was underway. A band was playing music from an end gallery. Prince Charles was standing before what looked like a throne. Between the two ends, the watching families sat. I located mine, and waved as I went by. Then we filtered down a side hall towards the front. Our names were checked again. My plumber friend touched up his hair in one of the many mirrors: he had a shock of spiky hair, which I told him made him the coolest person there. We talked in whispers about his business, and he gave me his card.

So my turn came. Oddly I remember little of my exchange with Prince Charles, except that he was very smiley, and seemed to know I was a writer. I asked him how on earth he managed to retain information about so many people, and he said, ‘Years of practice.’ Then I was walking backwards, bowing from the neck only as directed, and out to the far side to have the medal taken off its little hook and put in a box. The hook was re-cycled for others. And so round the back of the ballroom to join my family.

We then sat through the rest of the honouring, which was both boring and moving, an odd combination. I found time to study the six immense chandeliers high above us and wonder how they changed the light bulbs inside them. People were being honoured for ‘services to young people with life debilitating conditions in the Midlands’, ‘services to those with cancer’, ‘services to nursing and education in Africa’, ‘to tackling extremism’, ‘to Fleetwood Town Football Club’, ‘to sea angling’, ‘to theatre in Leicestershire’ – the sheer range of service was humbling. And who had I served? Nobody.

I still don’t know who put my name forward for an OBE, but I do feel honoured, and proud, and touched. Also extremely impressed by the professionalism of the operation. Time for the Royal Household to be given charge of the running of Southern Railways.

Chasing rainbows

The novel I’m currently working on has as one of its themes the point in life when a person senses that they have passed their peak: their high point of strength, beauty, power and respect from others. The best is in the past, and ahead lies only a long decline. Because I’m pursuing such thoughts I pick up passing references to the theme, and I have a memory of an article recently read (I can’t track it down) that illuminates it. The subject of the article was a poet who, having reached the age of 70 without becoming famous, wins the Pulitzer Prize. He feels gratified, and vindicated, and all that you’d expect, but also something else, something strangely closer to dismay. To explain this he refers to the two climbers who recently spent nineteen days clawing their way up a sheer rock face. On reaching the top they were met by awed reporters, acclaiming their achievement. The applause bewildered the climbers. The moment they got to the top, the experience was over: the thing they climbed for had stopped. It was not a moment to celebrate, but to lament.

I find this a powerful image. Perhaps it’s no more than a re-stating of the old adage ‘To journey is better than to arrive'; the trouble is, no one really believes that. I want to arrive at my destination. I want to achieve my goal. But I live in time: there is no arrival. No sooner is a goal achieved than I must set a new goal. So in brutal truth, I had better pay attention to the journey. The goals I set myself turn out to be mirages. They melt away as I reach them.

This means, at its most basic, I should never do a job I hate because it pays well. I should never neglect my emotional life because I’m too busy becoming successful. Maybe even, and I write this as a hard worker, I shouldn’t work too hard. And it also means, I should give up punishing myself for falling short of self-created goals. I’m ashamed to admit it, but however well I do, I always reach for more, and when I hit the point at which the more is beyond my reach, I feel regret. I feel disappointed. But the regret is pointless, and the disappointment is missing the point.

I doubt if I’ll learn from this, or change my habits of mind. But I write it down to focus my thoughts, and to give myself strength.

Found in Amherst, lost in Harvard

I suppose if you write a novel called ‘Amherst’ you can expect friendly interest in the town of Amherst, and I got it. My visit there last weekend was glorious. The event was packed to the rafters, and all books sold, with demand for many more. So this is the secret. I must write novels named after towns, and then go and sell them there.

I left Amherst well pleased with myself, and headed to the Harvard Book Store. The lovely people at the store organised everything beautifully. The chairs were arranged in tidy rows. An elderly couple came and sat down. A distracted-looking man asked me what I was going to talk about, and thanked me for the information, and departed. Two middle-aged ladies settled down, perhaps to rest their feet. The friendly staff looking after me told me tales of the lines that stretched out of the door and down Massachusetts Avenue when David Sedaris came, and how they’d had to have security on the doors for Hillary Clinton. My own crowd grew by another one, a student, then by another one, a bearded academic (I know this because he spoke to me afterwards). The elderly couple got up and left. As I began my talk, there were about six people listening. I say ‘about’ because I didn’t have the heart to count. I prefer the phrase ‘not very many’. Perhaps when I use it you’ll be generous, and suppose I had an audience of twelve or fifteen.

The Boston Globe was due to review the book on the day, but the review came out after I’d flown home. It’s a fine, thoughtful review: Emily Dickinson’s spirit “fuels the drama, which switches between two parallel stories that illuminate the power as well as the often crippling delusion of romantic love… As Nicholson shifts between the two main stories, he lays the groundwork for an examination of the ways of courtship and connection, then and now (which one character astutely sums up as “Everything’s possible, so nothing seems enough”)… In Nicholson’s telling, Emily urges “Go further, Austin. For me. . . . Do you want to die without having lived?” The introverted, purportedly virginal Emily is cast as a voyeur, experiencing love by proxy.” As any writer will tell you, one intelligent reader makes the whole thing worthwhile.

Bits of hot love life

One of my novels has just come out in France, and here’s a review translated from the French by Google Translate. Unfair to do this, I know, but I love it…

“William Nicholson weaves her web – after we have taken from “The intensity of everyday life.”  And it is with delight that we find ourselves captivated them, captives. Nicholson has an exceptional art of making any human feeling, the slightest act of any pain, a notable event or major, and thus extract the material of a real “adventure”. Adventure is here to take in its French-language polysemy: uncertain trial and that engages and sentimental adventure course, as announced by the title.

Belinda, Chloe, Meg, Jack, Alice, like the beads of a pinball game, and will draw erratic trajectories, moths hallucinated by fire, by the game of love. And, as it should be to love games, they are going to burn the wings. Passions, lies, omissions, betrayals, William Nicholson is a Master to associate the ingredients of the whirlwind love. He is a filmmaker and writer first (this is really his first trades) and writing – both linear and thrilling – is obviously the product. It has the consummate art of the writer with a passion for little, to make a story with bits – certainly hot – love life.

“A Lover’s speech” was like Roland Barthes. All situations in this novel, the actions seem locked into what Barthes calls “holophrase”, that is to say, the kind-statement that – by dint of statement – ends up being told , made or suffered without thinking, like mechanically. Nicholson’s characters seem insects in society, like termites in a termite mound: they advance as moved by the mechanism – necessary and absurd – in life, in a specific path, but it is unclear by what.

“Do not ask me to make a decision. I can not control myself. That’s why I came. As if I did not know that, from the moment we left Alice and where he asked me, “Have you come to London at times? »

He paid the bill and the waiter went to get her coat.

I have nothing to do. Not a single thing, damn! »

Adultery – O as the word has aged! – Becomes in this novel a story engine (s). Who sleeps with who really matter, that’s what the author tells us in this cataract of love and deceit! What is important is the human drama, theater of absurd shadows lie to others and lies to oneself. Nicholson talent spark in the description of the intimate affect. His writing – if that makes sense – is feminine as it evokes Jane Austen times. But make no mistake, it is our world, the world of today, it is with his vanity, his outsized egos, his nonsense.

The family takes for his rank, disintegrated couples, perverse and lost teenagers, selfish parents and unfit predators lovers. The family myth is shattered under the Nicholson brush strokes and these bits table are gradually, a kind of modern choir – an anti “Gloria” addressed to the vacuum of an era.

William Nicholson continues his exploration of humans. Almost in the manner of an anthropologist, pen in hand, sharp look. His writing – remarkably restored by the translation of Anne Hervouët – acts on the drive as an addictive product: we can not let this book before the last word.”

Leaving aside the fun of machine translation, I am of course delighted by the writer’s take on what I do, and proud to have my writing described as ‘feminine’.

The Lovers of Amherst

My new novel, The Lovers of Amherst, is now out (published as Amherst in the US). It’s in some ways my love letter to the poet Emily Dickinson, who I first encountered over forty years ago. Her poems shock and thrill me as much today as they did then. She herself is so unfathomable that I’ve been shy of writing about her, though over the years I’ve accumulated a great deal of knowledge about her, as well as a first edition of her poems, published in 1890. Then when Polly Longhurst published her edited edition of the letters and diaries of Emily’s brother Austin, relating his passionate adulterous affair with the wife of a colleague, I became fascinated by the world of the Dickinsons. The result is my new novel, which tells the story of that affair, seen alongside a contemporary story, also involving a love affair. Austin Dickinson’s passion for Mabel Todd is fascinating because it was so defiant of all convention – so much so that in order to justify what he was doing he concluded that his love must come from God. Tracking his affair, and Emily’s part in it, led me to reflect on Emily’s own attitude to sex and passion; and from there to my own attitudes. The result is a many-layered meditation on passionate love, with all its self-generated delusions as well as its glories.

Reviews

The Times: ‘A beguiling meditation on poetry and love… After reading this I’m resolved to become more familiar with Nicholson the novelist and to learn more about Alice, Jack, Nick and Laura’s back stories in novels such as The Secret Intensity of Everyday Life. What more could you ask for?’

The Mail on Sunday: ‘William Nicholson’s masterly novel, zigzagging between two contrasting eras, weaves love, sex and poetry together so seamlessly that you can hardly see the joins. You turn the pages compulsively because you care what will happen to the principals, fearlessly following their hearts, deaf to the clamour of alarm bells.’

Financial Times: ‘A compelling reflection on sex and marriage in the 19th century.’

The Independent: ‘William Nicholson’s scrupulously researched story throws fresh light on the extraordinary love affair between Austin Dickinson, 55, and 24-year-old Mabel Todd. We cannot know for sure what they shared in the privacy of Emily Dickinson’s dining room, where they often met, or what she saw and heard, or the effect on her poetry. By interspersing his narrative with snippets of extant correspondence, diary entries, and secret notes, drawn, mostly, from Longsworth and his own research in the Sterling Memorial Archives at Yale, alongside some of Emily Dickinson’s passionate poems, Nicholson creates a solid historical base from which he imaginatively recreates the time period and personalities involved. Moreover, the physical act of researching “the very notes they sent each other with such secrecy” is an integral part of the story, adding an air of factual realism from which he speculates as plausibly as a biographer… While fictional stage directions are a reminder of the writer of Shadowlands lurking in the background, something deeper is afoot. Alice’s problem (aside from tackling her first screenplay) is how to find a way into a story she doesn’t fully understand. With Nick, she discusses the process of storytelling; how to frame her fiction, and whether she needs to care about Mabel.The Lovers of Amherst is a rich writers’ resource. Without Mabel Todd, we may never have known the extent of Dickinson’s creativity. It was Mabel who undertook the task of preserving the letters and poems that survive, bringing order to the 1,800 poems, and pushing forward to publication. Nicholson’s story continues on after the deaths of Emily and Austin to explore the motivations behind Mabel’s efforts. His greatest achievement, though, in The Lovers of Amherst, is to compel us to approach Emily Dickinson’s poetry with fresh eyes.

Sunday Times: ‘…a love letter to an intriguing genius. Nicholson manages to convey the extraordinary, mesmerizing power of her poetry without clumsiness. Indeed, the 19th century sections are so historically rich that at times they feel more like biography than fiction.’

Reviews of ‘Lovers of Amherst’

The Times: ‘A beguiling meditation on poetry and love… After reading this I’m resolved to become more familiar with Nicholson the novelist and to learn more about Alice, Jack, Nick and Laura’s back stories in novels such as The Secret Intensity of Everyday Life. What more could you ask for?’

The Mail on Sunday: ‘William Nicholson’s masterly novel, zigzagging between two contrasting eras, weaves love, sex and poetry together so seamlessly that you can hardly see the joins. You turn the pages compulsively because you care what will happen to the principals, fearlessly following their hearts, deaf to the clamour of alarm bells.’

Financial Times: ‘A compelling reflection on sex and marriage in the 19th century.’

The Independent: ‘William Nicholson’s scrupulously researched story throws fresh light on the extraordinary love affair between Austin Dickinson, 55, and 24-year-old Mabel Todd. We cannot know for sure what they shared in the privacy of Emily Dickinson’s dining room, where they often met, or what she saw and heard, or the effect on her poetry. By interspersing his narrative with snippets of extant correspondence, diary entries, and secret notes, drawn, mostly, from Longsworth and his own research in the Sterling Memorial Archives at Yale, alongside some of Emily Dickinson’s passionate poems, Nicholson creates a solid historical base from which he imaginatively recreates the time period and personalities involved. Moreover, the physical act of researching “the very notes they sent each other with such secrecy” is an integral part of the story, adding an air of factual realism from which he speculates as plausibly as a biographer… While fictional stage directions are a reminder of the writer of Shadowlands lurking in the background, something deeper is afoot. Alice’s problem (aside from tackling her first screenplay) is how to find a way into a story she doesn’t fully understand. With Nick, she discusses the process of storytelling; how to frame her fiction, and whether she needs to care about Mabel.The Lovers of Amherst is a rich writers’ resource. Without Mabel Todd, we may never have known the extent of Dickinson’s creativity. It was Mabel who undertook the task of preserving the letters and poems that survive, bringing order to the 1,800 poems, and pushing forward to publication. Nicholson’s story continues on after the deaths of Emily and Austin to explore the motivations behind Mabel’s efforts. His greatest achievement, though, in The Lovers of Amherst, is to compel us to approach Emily Dickinson’s poetry with fresh eyes.

Sunday Times: ‘… a love letter to an intriguing genius.  Nicholson manages to convey the extraordinary, mesmerizing power of her poetry without clumsiness. Indeed, the 19th century sections are so historically rich that at times they feel more like biography than fiction.’

Reckless

BAFTA-winning screenwriter and novelist William Nicholson has outdone himself with this sequel to Motherland.

The ambitious Reckless is set largely against the backdrop of the Cuban Missile Crisis. London is a complex social world: bachelor Rupert advises Mountbatten as the rhetoric escalates and governments wage a war of bluster; Pamela is 18, bored, beautiful, and desperate to fall in love but falls in with Stephen Ward and Christine Keeler instead; at 29, Mary lives anonymously, ashamed of the childhood visions of Jesus Christ that turned her into a child prophet in Ireland; Khrushchev and Kennedy swear and scheme and count warheads.

It’s a Who’s Who of 1960s Britain, a masterful interweaving of the historical and the emotional, and in Nicholson’s hands, we almost expect the characters to walk off the page.

As the political clouds gather, whirlwinds descend on the Londoners. National fears hatch in backstreet conversations, Pamela sails giddily out of her depth, marriages falter with delicate ambiguity, spiritual demons are laid to rest, and love and secrets bleed unexpectedly into the present.

I raced through the 500 pages in 24 hours; full marks: 10/10

Reckless by William Nicholson is published in hardback by Quercus, priced £16.99 (ebook £10.99). Available February 13.

More reviews

The Times

The New Statesman

Express

The Lovers of Amherst

My new novel, The Lovers of Amherst, is now out (published as Amherst in the US). It’s in some ways my love letter to the poet Emily Dickinson, who I first encountered over forty years ago. Her poems shock and thrill me as much today as they did then. She herself is so unfathomable that I’ve been shy of writing about her, though over the years I’ve accumulated a great deal of knowledge about her, as well as a first edition of her poems, published in 1890. Then when Polly Longhurst published her edited edition of the letters and diaries of Emily’s brother Austin, relating his passionate adulterous affair with the wife of a colleague, I became fascinated by the world of the Dickinsons. The result is my new novel, which tells the story of that affair, seen alongside a contemporary story, also involving a love affair. Austin Dickinson’s passion for Mabel Todd is fascinating because it was so defiant of all convention – so much so that in order to justify what he was doing he concluded that his love must come from God. Tracking his affair, and Emily’s part in it, led me to reflect on Emily’s own attitude to sex and passion; and from there to my own attitudes. The result is a many-layered meditation on passionate love, with all its self-generated delusions as well as its glories.