Bookshelfie: Women’s Prize Podcast - S8 Ep9: Bookshelfie: Anne Sebba

Episode Date: March 25, 2025

Historian and award-winning biographer Anne Sebba talks about her incredible career interviewing everyone from Elizabeth Taylor to the Duchess of Windsor and the process of writing her newest book: The Women's Orchestra of Auschwitz: A Story of Survival. Anne Sebba began her career as a Reuters correspondent based in London and Rome. She has written eleven works of non-fiction, mostly about iconic 20th century women, translated into a variety of languages. Anne makes regular television and radio appearances and has presented two BBC radio documentaries about musicians. She is the author of the international bestseller That Woman, an acclaimed biography of Wallis Simpson, Duchess of Windsor, and the prize-winning Les Parisiennes: How the Women of Paris Lived, Loved and Died Under Nazi Occupation.  Her newest release The Women's Orchestra of Auschwitz: A Story of Survival tells an astonishing story of female solidarity, the power of music, and survival against all odds. Anne’s book choices are: ** The L-Shaped Room by Lynne Reid Banks ** Actress by Anne Enright ** Sylvia’s Lovers by Elizabeth Gaskell ** Unsheltered by Barbara Kingsolver ** Suite Française by Irene Nemirovsky Vick Hope, multi-award winning TV and BBC Radio 1 presenter, author and journalist, is the host of season eight of the Women’s Prize for Fiction Podcast. Every week, Vick will be joined by another inspirational woman to discuss the work of incredible female authors. The Women’s Prize is one of the most prestigious literary awards in the world, and they continue to champion the very best books written by women. Don’t want to miss the rest of season eight? Listen and subscribe now! You can buy all books mentioned from our dedicated shelf on Bookshop.org - every purchase supports the work of the Women's Prize Trust and independent bookshops.  This podcast is sponsored by Baileys and produced by Bird Lime Media.

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Our expert team combines evidence-based medicine with the comprehensive. passionate, unhurried care you and your family deserve today and for many years to come. When it comes to your health, you shouldn't settle for anything less than exceptional. Visit harrisonhealthcare.ca.ca.combe slash Toronto. I'm sometimes frustrated because I want to know how much of this is true and where does the boundary lie. But my relationship with fiction is I once said to somebody and got into big trouble, I said, I just have to read for pleasure. They said to me, of course, but isn't all reading for pleasure?

Well, it is. But when you have, or when I have a book on the go that I'm writing, I consider that the books I read and I always make notes. So that isn't quite the same category as just reading and being able to indulge the plot. And just, you know, it's not exactly beach reading. I hate sitting on a beach and it's most uncomfortable. well, you can't read in the sun. But holiday reading, should we say,

when you have just the time to indulge and just to immerse yourself in another world is a great gift. This is the Women's Prize for Fiction, bookshelfy podcast supported by Bayleys. Join us in celebrating women's writing from around the world in the 30th anniversary year of the Women's Prize for Fiction, sharing our creativity, our voices and our perspectives. I'm Vic Hope,

and I am your host for Season 8 of Bookshelfy, the podcast that asks inspiring and brilliant women to share the five books by women that have shaped them and their lives. Join me and my incredible guests, as we talk about the books you should be adding to your reading list. Today I am joined by Anne Seber. Anne is a historian and an award-winning biographer who began her career as a Reuters correspondent based in London and Rome.

She's written 11 works of non-fiction, mostly about iconic 20th century women translated into a variety of languages. Anne makes regular TV and radio appearances and has presented two BBC radio documentaries about musicians. She's the author of the international bestseller That Woman, an acclaimed biography of Wallace Simpson, Duchess of Windsor, and the prize-winning Les Parisien, how the women of Paris lived, loved and died under Nazi occupation. Anne was also a judge for the inaugural Women's Prize for Non-Fiction,

in 2024. Her newest release, the Women's Orchestra of Auschwitz, a story of survival, tells an astonishing story of female solidarity, the power of music and survival against all odds. And welcome, it is such a pleasure to have you here today, fresh from a flight as well, but not jet lags. No, that's not allowed in my family. It's a great privilege to be here. Thank you for asking me. This week we're actually going to be announcing the short list for the second year of the Women's Prize for Nonfiction. Could you just tell us a little bit about your judging experience for the inaugural year? Did it totally dominate your year or did it give you a new way of reading and a new way

of appreciating books? It made me realize how much more I could do with my time, actually, made me feel I must have been wasting my time up until then because we read a lot of books, but it was just such a pleasure and an insight to see how other people achieve what they do. So I think I learnt an awful lot. I learned about the power of memoir and women's experience. That's what I've always written about. But there's so much space to learn from how other people craft their book.

So it was just brilliant. And we had a good time. I think we jelled. All the judges brought something different to the experience. So by the end, of course, we were unanimous, but we had different experiences that we brought to finding what our level was. Just wonderful. You feel a bit bereft, actually.

Afterwards, after you've been so immersed in these worlds and you've had all of these books that you've been able to get lost in and then, oh, did you keep it up? Have you kept up sort of exploring maybe genres you wouldn't usually? Well, we all had great plans to read the fiction long list. or fiction shortlist at any rate. And I did start and I read Brotherless Night. And I thought after that there is nothing else.

Because it's exactly the sort of novel that I love. It's women, well, and many other people too, it's women's experience of war and how terrifying that is. It's social realism. It almost could have been factual and much of it was. And it's very well researched. And you'll see the five books I've chosen come into that category. But how women explain what their experience of trauma, of fighting and war is, was to me so perfectly judged in that book.

And I have gone on to read a couple of others. Perhaps we'll talk about them. I mean, I had to have a Barbara Kingsolver in my list today. I had to have an N-write, so, you know, we'll see where that takes us. But I haven't kept up that pace of reading, although, you know, I always have a book on the go, and I always have a book on Audible, so there are at least two books, and then I'm probably reviewing something. So, of course, I read quite a lot, but not quite at that pace. It's nice to have a little bit of time to sit with those characters, to sit with those themes.

What is your relationship like with fiction as a non-fiction writer? I adore it. I have to have a novel on the go. I can't. I'm sometimes frustrated because I want to know how much of this is true and where does the boundary lie. But my relationship with fiction is I once said to somebody and got into big trouble, I said, I just have to read for pleasure.

They said to me, of course, but isn't all reading for pleasure? Well, it is. But when you have, or when I have a book on the go that I'm writing, I consider that the books I read and I always make notes. So that isn't quite the same category as just reading and being able to indulge the plot. And just, it's not exactly beach reading. I hate sitting on a beach and it's most uncomfortable and you can't read in the sun.

But holiday reading, should we say, when you have. just the time to indulge. And as you say, I've just had a long flight. So what else do you do? But read. And it's just to immerse yourself in another world is a great gift. It is a different kind of engagement when your mind and body and soul are relaxed. Although I noticed as soon as you came in here, you went straight in your bag to reach for a pencil that you needed to be holding.

Yes. As we got into the chat. Well, you've spotted it. I can't do anything without a pencil. and writing it down. And even just now, when I was in Cambodia and Vietnam, I have my notebook and pencil. It must be a hangover from school.

I must have been a terrible nerd. You can't listen to anything. It's not an experience you're going to remember. If you don't have a notebook and a pencil, I'm just, I'm a journalist. I'm afraid. You are a chronicler of history of women's stories. I want to actually just take this opportunity to name the women of the female orchestra in Auschwitz that you write about in your latest book and bring their forgotten and often

unknown stories to light. We have Alma Rose, niece of Gustav Mahler and the camp's orchestra leader, Claire Monis, a famous nightclub singer and actress, at the pianist Fania Finelon, who was depicted by Vanessa Redgrave in the controversial film playing for time. We've got Flora Jacobs, a Dutch woman who had been on the run from the Nazis for years before she was deported to Auschwitz, and so many more. Why was it important for you to tell these stories? Gosh, that's a huge question, but it was, and I've become obsessed by it. I've wanted to write about women's experience of war and World War II,

so that of course takes you to the Holocaust. But I didn't feel until now it was my story to tell. I'm not a survivor. I'm not the child of a survivor. But my father drove a tank during the war and he ended up in Belsen. And the book will be published 80 years after the liberation of Belsen because I found some notes in the National Archives in Q in his handwriting talking about how he was responsible for destroying the lights written huts of Belsen.

Now, though my book is about the Women's Orchestra of Auschwitz, at the end of the war, these women were taken by the novel. in their bizarre idea of what to do with the surviving prisoners from Auschwitz, they were taken to Belsen. So when I found my father's notes, I realized that he was there actually on May the 24th when the remnants of the orchestra were giving a concert in Belsen, and yet I never spoke about it with him. So suddenly I found, and it really was visceral actually that he was there

at the moment that the remnants of the orchestra were giving a concert. And it was this juxtaposition that wouldn't leave me. I was obsessed by understanding more about the women. And there were about 40 or 50 women who Alma Rose enabled to survive. She kept them out of the gas chambers. A couple of them died of typhus in Belsen, but they weren't deliberately killed. And so I just couldn't resist. This is a story of women in war, of survival, of women's experience in Auschwitz.

And it has just taken hold of me and gripped me for four or five years. So much of my reading has been pretty bleak and grim. On the other hand, this is a story of survival. That's the subtitle of my book. And I think it is redemptive in a way. It does show how against all the odds, these women survived at a terrible price. I think their post-war experience was appalling

because these were traumas they could never rid themselves of and the second generation inherited some of this trauma as well. And so anyway, that's how I've been keeping myself occupied for the last few years. Let's talk about the complexity and the humanity of women on the page when so often they can be glossed over and get into your first bookshelfy book, which I can see is in your lap there.

It's the L-shaped room by Lynn Reed Banks. Lynn Reed Banks' compassionate first novel examines the stigma of unmarried motherhood in pre-pill pre-abortion Act Britain. Pregnant by accident, kicked out of home by her father, 27-year-old Jane Graham goes to ground in the sort of place she feels she deserves a bug-ridden boarding house attic in Fulham.

She thinks she wants to hide from the world, but finds out that even at the bottom of the heap, friends and love can still be found, and self-respect is still worth fighting for. And in your notes, you described this book as your Bible. What about it? It was so formative for you. Well, I grew up in a fairly traditional conservative family.

my parents didn't even want me to go to university. So that was the first battle. And then from university, I went to Reuters and lived on my own in Rome. So I felt I was, in my own, small way, breaking a few boundaries. And I do remember, I mean, you can see how well-read and doggie it this copy is.

And I remember thinking I really was breaking free at last. So that's why it's my Bible. It's about a, a woman who develops and matures. I mean, I should say at the outset, there's a lot of very difficult racist attitudes, attitudes of the 1950s, 1960s, that are hard to stomach these days,

having just reread it. I thought, oh my goodness, am I really going to talk about this book? But I am because if I'm genuinely going to talk about books that mattered to me, novels by women, and this was groundbreaking in its day, not just for being a single mother pregnant and her father's disapproval,

but everything else she decides actually she can be that woman and she grows during the novel. So I loved it. I was going to read you just the opening paragraph because that really sets the tone. There wasn't much to be said for the place really, but it had a roof over it and a door which locked from the inside,

which was all I can. cared about just then. I didn't even bother to take in the details, they were pretty sordid, but I didn't notice them, so they didn't depress me. Perhaps because I was already at rock bottom, I just threw my one suitcase onto the bed, took my few belongings out of it, and shut them all into one drawer of the three-legged chest of drawers. Then there didn't seem to be anything else I ought to do. So I sat in the armchair and stared out of the window. She is Jane, the main, the protagonist. She is a bit of a heroine in a way because as I say, she matures and she develops and she recognises that she can actually take this on becoming a single mother. And in later years,

I met Lynne Reed Banks because she was a neighbor of mine and I was writing then a book, women reporters and I just met her socially and she said to me in the upfront manner that anyone who knew her will recognize well aren't I included in your book and I looked at her and I didn't realize but she was one of the first TV journalists at ITN so of course I then interviewed her and she did have a place in my book and she was a trailblazer and she talked about how she wrote this book while she was at ITN because she wasn't taken that seriously as a woman reporter. So in her spare time, she was able to write this amazing novel. And meeting her, I realized, you know, the barriers that women have broken down.

And this book has been a seminal barrier-breaking book for many women setting out on their own. So I really stand by the fact that it was my Bible then for women breaking barriers and boundaries now. I think there'd be something more acceptably modern, but absolutely it tick the box then. It was your book, Battling for News, that recounted this evolution of women reporters over time. Now, I've read that you were the first woman that Reuters took as a graduate trainee journalist.

What was that like? How did you carve out a space for yourself in what must have been an incredibly male-dominated space? Well, it was incredibly male-dominated, and I was incredibly naive. I mean, they commented on my clothes and my makeup and walking into the fifth floor newsroom. It was terrifying. And I didn't realize at the time because I so loved the work that I just immersed myself in it and thought, wow, this is such an honour, such a privilege. I could put up with that. I mean, I have, I would like to say, matured a little bit myself over the years. but it was very, very exciting and I was prepared to put up with so much of it.

And I went there speaking French, German and Russian. That was the only reason they took me, I'm sure. But then they decided, oh, those are all much too dangerous as places to send women. Let's send Anne to Rome. That's better for a woman because she'll be able to smile and deal with all the corrupt politicians. So I spoke no Italian, but they sent me on an intensive course, and I managed. And while I was there, that is how they treated me. Elizabeth Taylor was about to get a divorce or not get a divorce from Richard Burton.

And they said to me, go on, Anne, meet Elizabeth Taylor. She's in a restaurant. Ask her if she is getting a divorce. This is crazy. But as I went to the restaurant, there was a long line of male reporters, was desperate to get in and talk to Elizabeth Taylor. But actually I smiled at the Metro D and he said, okay, come on in.

I'll find you a seat on the bonquette. You can talk to Elizabeth. I can't remember if I actually summoned up the courage to say to, are you getting a divorce from Richard Burton or not? But that didn't matter. There I was making friends with Elizabeth Taylor. It was wonderful. And all the men were kept outside.

So, you know, you could say how awful. of me that I played to my femininity. But, you know, I was very, very grateful. And then a few years later, I was also the first woman that Reuters sacked when I got pregnant, because in those days, they didn't think you could be a foreign correspondent and a mother. So I paid back my maternity money. And, you know, I half thought of suing them, but I didn't really have the strength. And I'm very pleased I didn't because my first biography was about Enid Bagnold, the author of National Velvet, who was married to the chairman of Reuters, Sir Roderick Jones. So not only did Reuters make available all their incredible archive, but I get to interview Elizabeth Taylor a second time

because of her role in National Velvet and reminded her that we'd met in Rome. I'm sure she didn't remember, but, you know, that is quite a privilege. Well, I think on interviewing Elizabeth Taylor, it's the perfect time. Your second book, Shelfy book, is actress by Anne Enright. This is the story of Irish theatre legend, Catherine O'Dell, as told by her daughter, Nora. It tells of early stardom in Hollywood, of highs and lows on the stages of Dublin and London's West End. Catherine's life is a grand performance with young Nora watching from the wings. But this relationship between mother and daughter cannot survive Catherine's past or the world's damage. As Nora uncovers her mother's secrets, she acquires a few of her own.

Then fame turns to infamy when Catherine decides to commit a bizarre crime. Now this book was long listed for the 2020 Women's Prize for Fiction. You've described it as gorgeously written. Tell us why you picked it. Oh, for so many reasons, but mostly because I just loved it. I think as a biographer, you realise very early on that the least reliable sources for your book are the children. Well, on earth, do children know about their parents' lives? I mean, if we go back to Inid Bagnold and her son, he said,

well, I think my mother kept a box of biscuits by the bed because she hated sex, but there were four children. Well, of course, you know, children don't understand about all of that. So I was drawn to it by the idea, and it is so convincing it could have been a biography. But the idea that Nora is desperate to understand who her father was, that's the nub of it in a way, but she's more desperate to understand her mother. And in describing her mother's life, she uses such lush prose and talking about dresses and parties and parties. and drinks and this grand life that her mother led. I mean, only Anne Enright could do that.

And I wish I could speak in her lelting Irish phrases of everything is just so lovely. And it's lovely, one of her all-time favorite words, but it is gorgeous and rich. And so a biography couldn't possibly carry that descriptive power, but it is at one level. It's more than a biography. So Hollywood in the 1940s and 50s, you feel you're there. And then back to Ireland. And her love for her mother is all-consuming and so powerful even when her mother goes mad. She's intensely close to her mother.

So it works at one level as this rich relationship between mother and daughter. And you understand a lot about Nora and Catherine O'Dell, the invented surname. Why did I choose it? My own grandmother was on the stage, actually. She started out with Charlie Chaplin and was quite famous between the ages of 14 when she left school and 21 when she made a very happy marriage, but gave up completely. And I've often wondered what must it have been like to be in music hall and have people following you and writing about you and this intense fame that swells your head.

Of course it does. And my grandmother was also an artist's model. So I've been fascinated by that world for ages. and to have it pinned down on the page, I just loved reading it. It's the most exquisite experience that straddles biography and fiction. That theme of motherhood is so potent

and, as you say, sumptuously written in this novel. Did any of the discussions resonate with your own experiences as a mother? Oh, that's a tough question. Luckily, my mother didn't go mad because I think that's the essence of this book that Nora loves her mother and cherishes her. Even when you think it must be so hard to adore a mother who is always the biggest person in the room. Did it resonate with my experience either of my mother and me being a daughter? Yes, I suppose I did think my mother was always the most beautiful person in the room.

I do remember that. And equally, I remember being completely overwhelmed by the experience of becoming a mother and finding that love that is so intense. And you think, well, of course I love my husband, but loving my children is another game. And now, you know, I'm a grandmother and I love my grandchildren. So it's a different kind of love. And yes, she does manage to pin that on the page in a way that I could only think in terms of the daughter adoring the mother. I don't think I came up to that.

But I'm very lucky the other way round. Of course I have the intense love. I hope I don't challenge them in the way that Catherine O'Dell certainly challenged Nora. You talked about the role of the narrator in a biography, in biographical writing. She had some really interesting insights about a reliable narrator. What can this really realistically be? Is the goal of objective truth a fair expectation? Can biographers really shine this sort of unique light on an immovable reality of the past?

No. Well, that's a really interesting question too. Maybe that's why I loved this novel so much. because you know that it is a novel, although you keep wanting to Google. Did Catherine O'Dell really exist? What's this based on? And all the books I've chosen have this historical reality at their core. And then a clever novelist is able to take that seed and run with it and explode.

It's like a flower sort of blossoming. But to answer your question, because I must, can any biographer really claim to be completely objective? And the answer is, of course not. And anyone who pretends they are or who pretends that their biography is going to be the last word on this subject? No, that's just not true, and you can't live with that. But I do think that you try your best.

Of course, you're subjective. You're subjective in the material that you choose. and how you phrase, frame a quotation. I mean, I like to think that I pick very fairly, and of course I source where the quotation came from in the footnotes, so you can look it up. But you can't put in 300 pages a whole life. And you're not telling the truth if you claim that this is the entire life.

So much as I think I'm as objective as it could point, possibly be. I mean, I was trained at Reuters where you had to have two sources before you could draw any conclusions. So, you know, the truth matters to me, but you're subjective in the way in your environment, in your own life, what matters to you, what you choose to include. I'm afraid you try as hard as you can, but you're doomed to failure. That feeling of rushing to Google, or something that may or may not be. I felt it so much when reading, like we just discussed, Brotherless Night, the whole way through.

But I learn a lot. Of course. Bailey's is proudly supporting the Women's Prize for Fiction by helping showcase incredible writing by remarkable women, celebrating their accomplishments and getting more of their books into the hands of more people. Bailey's is the perfect adult treat, whether shaken in a cocktail, over ice cream,

or paired with your favourite book. Check out Bailey's. for our favourite Bailey's recipes. Let's move on now to your third book-shabby book, which is also in your lap. It's Sylvia's Lovers by Elizabeth Gaskell. Sylvia's Lovers is Elizabeth Gaskell's last completed novel. Set in a fictional Whitby at the end of the 18th century, the novel is a modern revenge tragedy in which well-intentioned actions have unforeseen and terrible human consequences.

Sylvia is loved by two men. her serious cousin, Philip, and the charismatic sailor Charlie Kinraid. When one of them betrays her, her path in life seems fixed. Against the backdrop of the Napoleonic Wars and the ever-present threat of press gangs, the story darkens when Sylvia's father is roused into vengeful violence. But this trouble proves only the precursor to a greater calamity that will radically alter Sylvia's future. Tell us a bit more about this book. Why did you choose it? Well, I read history at university, so I've always been chasing my tale in trying to catch up with the classics.

I wish sometimes I'd read English, but I thought, well, I can put that to rights just by reading. So I had a phase when I read so much Victorian literature and I adore Dickens and Esther Waters and all these books, but they're mostly men writing about women's experiences. So I love Elizabeth Gaskell, because here's a woman writing about women's experiences. And I was rereading it just last week, and somebody I was on holiday with said, well, what's it about in a nutshell?

And it's hard to describe in a nutshell, but I said, you know, the woman marries the wrong man in the end. She's loved by two men and doesn't appreciate her. how and picks the wrong man in a sense, but she matures and realizes her mistakes. It's a wonderful story about the Napoleonic Wars and the power of the press gangs. And of course, Elizabeth Gaskell herself researched deeply at the British Museum. So it's a book of social realism. It's a book about history.

But with this heroin at its course, Sylvia's a teenager when the book opens, and she falls in love with a very dashing man who might have proved stayed. But in the event, she is overcome by circumstances. And so she marries her cousin who adores her, but she's never in love with him. And it's a sad marriage, but she matures to realize all that he has given her. And I think I loved it particularly because there are about four or five characters who are all flawed characters. Sylvia is flighty and doesn't realize the power she has over men. And Philip, the man she eventually marries, is boring and intellectual and also doesn't realize that he's pursuing a woman who can't give him.

what he sees in her. And the exciting man that she wants to marry, Charlie Kinraid, is also flawed in that he doesn't realize what Sylvia has had to go through when he's snatched himself by the press gang. So, you know, this is a novel about a mixture of flawed characters who all develop. It's a woman's perspective written by. a woman, which is so crucial here. And your work is devoted to documenting history through women's perspectives. We see this, of course, in your newest release, the Women's Orchestra

of Auschwitz. Can you tell us what readers can expect from this? I think it is a book of redemption, survival against the odds. I don't want to pretend that music is what gave them their, that music provided their salvation because they played awful music. It was marches. It was marches to make the other prisoners march faster as they went out to work. But nonetheless, music plays a role as a background. It was because they were able to play music that they survived. I think it's understanding that this is not in any way collaboration.

but ultimately we all do what we need to survive. And I always say to myself, well, what would you do? You'd do anything, I think, within reason. And it's the greatest crime of the Nazis, in my view, that they made ordinary people perform acts that they would never otherwise do to keep the system going. So of course they were used by the Nazis,

but I think there's a very clear line between being used by them and doing what you feel is necessary to survive because ultimately by surviving they were able to tell their story and I'm able to bring all the threads, I hope, bring all the threads or most of the threads together. Of course it's how I see it now through a 21st century lens. but if they hadn't survived, we wouldn't have known about this experience of what it meant to live in Auschwitz

on a daily basis without food, with a bunk bed that had to be shared by, in most of the blocks, thousands of people at the beck and call of the Nazis at any moment. and yet the instinct to survive, the human instinct, the humanity to look after each other, the humanity to look after a sister or a mother, or ultimately each of them is what, for me, I hope readers will take away from this book.

Well, on that instinct to survive and the humanity that we have in looking after one another, we move on to your fourth book, Anne, which is unsheltered by Barbara Kingsolver. Meet Willa Knox, a woman who stands braced against a world which seems to hold little mercy for her and her family, or their old crumbling house falling down around them. Willa's two grown-up children, a newborn grandchild, and her ailing father-in-law have all moved in at a time when life seems at its most precarious. But when Willer discovers that a pioneering female scientist lived on the same thing, same street in the 1800s. Could this historical connection be enough to save their home from ruin?

And can Willa, despite the odds, keep her family together? Now, we've already mentioned her name because Barbara Kingsolver is a much-loved author in our Women's Prize community. I adore her. I'm obsessed with her, the only writer to win the Women's Prize for fiction twice so far. What is it about her writing that appeals to you? Well, it's social realism par excellence, isn't it? I mean, she really puts her elbows in deep into everything that's wrong with society. I mean, you could read it at that level of a book that is just griping at how awful society is. Her house is falling down.

She's landed with her grandchild whom she adores because, Her daughter-in-law has taken her life and why has she taken her life? I mean, that's a whole other theme. It's crammed with themes. But I, of course, adore Willa Knox because she's a journalist and she's a freelance journalist and everything is a story and she goes everywhere with her notebook and pencil. And I just identified with her how her family is thrown on her. And I hope I've said enough.

I adore having my family thrown at me. But it just resonated with me that, you know, she's trying to find enough money to put the house back together if she can get a grant because it's falling down. So she researches the older community. It's a double narrative, which is complicated and clever. It's a very rich book with many, many themes. But into her present day life, she is looking after her.

husband's father, her son's baby, she has a slightly challenging daughter. Her life is very rich and very challenging, and throughout it all, she's trying to be a journalist. And it's a tough life, but it's just such a convincing story of how complicated life for women frequently is. and she doesn't complain. She just gets on with it and adores her husband. For me, this is just one of Barbara King Solver's best of all time books because it's so genuine and heartfelt. Barbara has this incredible way of researching her subjects,

really getting her elbows in, like you said. And our protagonist is a journalist. We keep talking about it, but what is, in your opinion, the role of journalism? journalism in a healthy society, the role of research. You talked about the two sources that you always had to have at Reuters, and sometimes it doesn't feel like that. It's the case in some of the journalism that I'm reading.

Who's responsible for its integrity, something that we might say is eroding in traditional media at the moment? Oh, another big, big question, and so important. I'm also a trustee of the National Archives at Q. and I keep banging on about how important it is to show children that there are some facts. I mean, even though I admitted that biographers can be fairly accused of subjectivity, really the bigger point is that there are documents and archives and facts. And heaven's in a post-truth world.

I can't believe I've just said that phrase because I don't really believe it's a post-truth world, I think truth does still matter. And we have to keep in mind that there are documents and there are facts and good journalists will report. So journalism is more important than ever, just because it feels as if with social media it's available to everybody. That's social media, I still think there are good journalists who one can trust and there are documents and there are facts. and I just believe that we have to go on trusting good sources. How do you approach the research process in your own work? By finding as many letters and diaries and documents as you can.

You can argue that diaries aren't reliable, that people have written diaries with a view that a posterity will read them and so they write things in their diaries that aren't necessarily to be trusted. But letters, I think, old-fashioned letters in envelopes that one person wrote to another person are a fantastic source because most probably they didn't expect anyone else

to read those letters. But it's a mixture of the diaries, the letters, the books that were written at the time, the newspaper accounts, photographs. Often you can see an awful lot in a photograph as well. So you have to combine all this mixture of sources and hope you arrive at some sort of synthesis. You mentioned in your notes, and we've talked very briefly about the theme of home in this novel. It's a transient thing, but the character still yearn for shelter and stability in this novel, which we could see as a bit

River hindrance. What does home mean for you? Well, the title of the novel is unsheltered. So I think you can read an awful lot into that without a roof over your head. You don't have a home. Of course it's not a physical place, although one has memories from a physical place. But I remember thinking when my own mother died, that actually the roof over my head had gone somehow. And I kept that in mind very much during this book. That's not to say home is where your parents are, but it's the natural evolution of a generation. When your parents die, you become the most senior person in that family. You're responsible for the children. So I suppose it's the generations that look to you, that create a home, it's family.

Family is home. The family that you love to have thrown at you. Yes, I absolutely do. And I can't believe we're at this point already, but it's time to talk about your fifth and final bookshelfy book today, which is Sweet Francaise by Irene Nemirovsky. In 1941, Irene sat down to write a book that would convey the magnitude of what she was living through

by evoking the domestic lives and personal trials. of the ordinary citizens of France. Nemirovsky's death in Auschwitz in 1942 prevented her from seeing the day, 65 years later, that the existing two sections of her plant novel sequence, Sweet Francaise,

would be rediscovered and hailed as a masterpiece. Set during the year that France fell to the Nazis, Sweet Francaise falls into two parts. The first is a brilliant depiction of a group of Parisians as they flee the Nazi invasion, and the second, follows the inhabitants of a small rural community under occupation.

Amidst the mess of defeats and all the hypocrisy and compromise, there is hope. Tell us about why this book had such a lasting impact on you. Well, it's very hard to read Sweet Francaise, which was only published more than 50 years after the author's death, without bearing in mind the circumstances of it. So Irene Nemehovsky was born in Ukraine. She was Russian Jewish. She only came to France when she was a teenager.

But she loved France. She studied at the Sorbonne. She converted to Catholicism, which I believe was not just to save herself from the Nazis. I think she really felt, A, that would give her a spiritual calm, but it was the religion of France. She spoke French.

She wrote in French. She absolutely adored. the country and yet because she was an outsider she was able to keep this critical eye on who the French were and that's really the strength of Sweet Francaise. It is unblinking in its criticism of the French upper classes. So Erein moved out of Paris when the Nazis when the Nazis occupied. Paris. She lived in a small village in Burgundy where they had a home and she hadn't got French nationality, which she could have done, but she hadn't got round to it. She thought she was French. She had her children baptized. She took them to Mass. But of course, in 1942 when the French

had to wear a yellow star, everybody in the village knew that she was Jewish. It didn't matter to her that she was born Jewish. As I say, she converted to Catholicism. But she was a little bit. She was was picked up by French police using a French van and taken to a French camp, Pithivier, and then to Auschwitz, where she died of typhus. So before she left, she handed this leather notebook to her two children, and they were convinced that it was just a diary, and they couldn't bring themselves to look at it. The fact that the two children survived is, of course, interesting

because they were looked after by a mixture of... the nanny, the governess, resistors, the church. And when they finally came to look at it at the end of the 20th century, they realized it wasn't a diary. It was this unfinished masterpiece, which Irene had tried to model on war and peace. So her Russianness comes through in this. And when I talked about her unblinking eye for the French leaving,

you see this family, the pericons, this upper middle class family, they're packing everything, their fur coats, and then they're worried, how can they pack their jewelry as well? Will there be enough space for the jewelry? They have no concept of the fact that this is an existential exit. And so I keep talking about social realism

because I understand that the books I've chosen are deeply rooted in history. But this is a novel. They were invented characters, but they were characters that Iren understood only too well. And as you see them fleeing

and worried about such mundanities as the jewelry and the fur coats, it explains why France was not at all prepared for the dramatic fall that overcame them and why people like

Irene, were eventually picked up by the French Gestapo and she died. But the second chapter in this unfinished symphony, which is called Dolce, shows her humanity, her compassion because Lucille falls heavily in love with a very cultured German soldier. And she's living with her mother-in-law and, of course, the relationship can't develop. But what Erein shows in this section of the book is her understanding that some of the Germans absolutely were civilized and cultured, did not want to be where they were doing what they were doing. This particular German, she keeps focusing on his very long fingers because he plays the piano. So none of her characters are stereotypical.

they're fully developed, but it wasn't finished. I mean, the book, as published, is full of notes and she intended to go back and revise it. And the idea, I mean, of course, her death is a tragedy at any level, but it's a tragedy because of the books that might have been, that won't ever appear. And this would have been a French war and peace. I'm absolutely convinced of it.

At least we have the two chapters. You've noted that France in the 30s and 40s was a special interest of yours at university. Your book Les Parisians focuses on wartime Paris, but quite uniquely recounts the everyday lives of women and girls at this time. What drew you and has always drawn you to this narrative? Because women hadn't spoken about it.

women in France were put into two dimensions, really. Either they were collaborators or one or two of them were resistors. Well, it's much more complicated than that. It's much more nuanced. So I think really until the 1990s, women didn't want to speak about what they did under the occupation because either they felt they hadn't done enough. It was very difficult for women formally to join the resistance because that meant either abandoning children or abandoning elderly parents.

So many of them stayed put. And then they were tarred with the brush of being a collaborator. Well, they probably weren't actively collaborating. And what I found was by the time I started my research, many of these women were grandmothers and in their 80s. So I was very fortunate. They felt ready to talk. Why did they feel ready?

Well, I love interviewing old people because I think it's a basic human instinct that when you reach the end of your life, you look back on it and you want to make sense of it. Most of us want to feel we've had some purpose. So by interviewing elderly people, they were trying, you could say, if you're cynical, that they're creating a narrative. Lots of people do that. They try and make a story out of their lives. but I don't want to be cynical. I actually think that many of these women felt unable to tell their children what they'd been through because they wanted their children to grow up in normality,

but they were able to tell their grandchildren. And many of them were being pressed by grandchildren. What did you do in the war? And so they looked back. And what I concluded was that many women actually had done a number of small acts of resistance. perhaps they'd delivered political tact saying that you must resist. There will be an allied invasion. Perhaps they'd sheltered a downed airman and taken him to a secret house.

They may have done something small, but cumulatively these acts amounted to something. And that's what I really wanted to show that French women weren't all of a peace. They hadn't all slept with Germans, which is. Actually, one of the stereotypical views of many English people who felt that the French had caved in too easily and that French women had made their peace with German soldiers for the sake of a pair of nylons or a dinner or whatever it was. And showing a much more nuanced version of events. And certainly I don't compare myself to Irene Nemerowski at all, but it's what she does in this fictional version. of events.

And what I tried to do in Les Parisienne was show that it's a much more complicated story and we should approach French women during the war and understand we weren't occupied. Again, I come back to this phrase, what would I have done? And so understanding how women in Paris dealt with the German occupiers,

I think in some ways it's the book I'm proudest of because it's such a complicated story and I feel they deserve to be understood and we were really incredibly lucky that in England we weren't occupied because I don't know how I would have behaved or my neighbour would have behaved so I feel they deserve to be understood

in all their complexity. And from Les Parisienne to the Women's Orchestra of Auschwitz and throughout your work over the years, you have asked people, particularly women, to tell you the stories of their lives. And as you've just said, they want to make some sense of it. They want to work out what the purpose was.

So I'd like to sit here now and ask you to look back on your life, your work, and what would you say has been the purpose, the sense of purpose? Oh, I'm not ready to answer that question at all, but if I can tell other people's stories, I'm just a storyteller and how lucky am I that I can be a storyteller and be published as a storyteller? But I like to think I've got a few stories left in me still. Absolutely, absolutely. I have enjoyed hearing these stories so, so much.

I am going to ask you a very, very difficult question now, and that is to pick one of the five books, one of the five stories you brought today as a favourite. That is really, really hard. I think I'm going to pick Barbara Kingsolver because I know that self-identity is the first crime of the biographer. You absolutely must not identify with the person you're writing about. but I think I'm allowed to identify a little bit with Willer

and because I so admire Barbara Kingsholver, I love her style, I love her engagement with issues. Oh, I would love to be able to write a book of that calibre. So I think, can I pick that? You absolutely can, of course. Thank you so, so much for joining us. This has been illuminating. It's been sumptuous gorgeous.

I've enjoyed every second of it. Thank you. Thank you. I'm Vic Hope and you've been listening to the Women's Price for Fiction Bootschelphie podcast, brought to you by Bayleys and produced by Birdline Media. Thank you for joining me for this episode. You'll find all the books discussed in our show notes. If you've enjoyed it, please leave us a rating or review to help other readers discover even more brilliant books by women. See you next time.