Author Candida Lycett Green explains how the urge to explore drives her writing
Candida Lycett Green
Candida Lycett Green is the author of over a dozen books including The Dangerous Edge of Things and Over the Hills and Far Away. She has written and presented documentaries for the BBC and is a contributing editor at Vogue. Since 1992 she has been writing a regular column about England’s unspoilt places for The Oldie, and her latest book, Unwrecked England, is a compilation of 100 of her columns. She talks to us about avoiding the poetry of her father Sir John Betjeman, and her insatiable thirst for exploration.
What inspired you to become a writer?
Having to get a job and earn my living. I was quite good at English at school and writing was part of my parents’ trade so it seemed obvious. I saw it as a craft I could do rather than being inspiration-driven.
What influence, if any, did your father’s poems have on your own writing?
I didn’t read his poetry properly, nor my mum’s books, until I was old enough to no longer be covered in embarrassment. Because I knew them so intimately I felt couldn’t judge their work objectively until after they’d died.
How did you find your first work as a writer?
I went round all the magazines until I got a job writing captions for £8 a week.
Did you face much rejection initially?
My first book was a children’s book that was commissioned by a publisher who collapsed before it was finished, so I then had to tout it round. It was rejected by five or six publishers. You don’t get published just because you’re the daughter of famous writers.
How did you come to write for the Oldie?
I have worked for Richard Ingrams, the editor of the Oldie, on and off for fifty years. I acted in his review at the Edinburgh festival and help him to staple together the first copy of Private Eye. He created the Unwrecked England column for me when he started the Oldie. He sold the idea to me that when I’d written 100 columns he would turn it into a book. We actually did that several years ago, and this is the second collection. This time round I had the luxury of having 500 columns to choose from.
What is it about England that you love so much?
I feel connected to it. I feel it’s part of me - I’m part of England.
I’m happy to go abroad for holidays but I don’t feel conjoined to other countries the way I do to England. I suppose it’s in my gut!
Do you have any favourites among the 100 places you selected for Unwrecked England?
My homeland is in the Berkshire Downs close to Ashdown and the Uffington White Horse, which I can see from the window as I speak. That’s definitely a favourite.
You mention in our preface to Unwrecked England that you prefer to do your travelling on horseback. Why is that?
That’s how I like finding places. If you arrive by car, you don’t get any of the atmosphere of a place until you stop and get out. Arriving by horse on a track at the back of a place is pretty wonderful. You get a more encompassing view of a place
What are the biggest challenges of writing?
Sitting down and starting.
What do you enjoy most about it?
Carrying out the research that I do for the column. The exploring came before the writing - the need to explore feeds the column, rather than the other way round. I love finding my way about and meeting the people who make a place what it is. Finding new tracks or roads is like opening presents.
Where do you carry out the majority of your writing?
Wherever I am I take notes, and I also have a recorder when I’m on horseback. You can’t just write about it in retrospect - I have to feel a place through describing it. The point of the place is the setting, the trees that surround it, nature…
When I get home I type it up on my laptop and I print it out every so often if I’m doing a book and I email to my editor or agent to store in case of fire and so on. My friend Susan Hill taught me to do that.
What has been the highlight of your career so far?
I edited my dad’s letters and prose as well as I could and I hope I did him proud.
What advice would you offer an aspiring writer?
Anyone can write, everyone has a story. It’s simply a question of application. Nothing else.
What are you working on now?
I have a friend I ride with and we’re planning to ride through the Lune Valley, Lancaster, or maybe the Welsh Marches up in Hereford.
Unwrecked England by Candida Lycett Green is available from Amazon
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Unwrecked England sounds like the ideal Christmas present for about ten people I know. Thanks for the inspiration, in more ways than one! What a fabulous job you have.