Sarah Waters's Blog, page 3

The Little Stranger, by Sarah Waters has been named as one of the 100 greatest British novels, as part of a new poll conducted for the BBC. The list was compiled by BBC Culture contributor Jane Ciabattari, who polled 82 book critics and literary scholars from outside the UK to choose the greatest British novels as seen by the rest of the world. The Little Stranger is ranked at number 45.

The diverse list ranges from classic to contemporary literature, and is also notable for the high number of female writers featured, making up 40 per cent of the top 100.

The full list of novels can be viewed here.

Sarah Waters, 2015

Sarah Waters shortlisted for the Baileys Women’s Prize for Fiction 2015 with The Paying Guests.

In November 2015 I was invited to choose my ten Desert Island Movies for an interview with Jo Botting at the Cinema Museum, London. Here’s the list I came up with.

The Singing Ringing Tree (1957)

Watch a clip on YouTube

Back in the school holidays of the early 1970s this film seemed always to be on tv. It’s one of the first movies I remember watching – and watching alone, able to think my own thoughts about it. It contained much that was perplexing, not least the English-language voice-over with the German soundtrack half-audible beyond. But the fairy-tale motifs and the synthetic landscape are the universal ones of childhood, and the strangeness simply added to the charm. (The colours, however, always take me by surprise: they were lost on our black and white telly.) As an adult I’ve discovered that the film was made by a state-run studio in the GDR. As a fair-haired little girl, what impressed me most vividly about the story was the haughty blonde princess losing her looks – though I remember being very moved by the fact that she regains her prettiness by learning to be kind. This clip gives a sense of the general craziness of the film, and features one of its most memorable characters, the giant rolling-eyed goldfish.

Jason and the Argonauts (1963)

Watch a clip on YouTube

This is another film from my childhood; I remember enjoying it with my dad. It features the fabulous stop-motion animation of Ray Harryhausen – so much creepier and more satisfying than modern CGI. There are many terrific moments in this film: the ship’s talking figurehead; the harpies, meanly trapped by a net; Neptune rising from the waves to push apart the Clashing Rocks; the bronze giant, Talos, defeated when the plug on his ankle is removed, letting out a gush of ichor… But this clip, featuring an army of fighting skeletons, is perhaps the most iconic of all.

The Pit and the Pendulum (1961)

Watch a clip on YouTube

I was addicted to horror films when I was a child, so I’ve chosen this film to sort of stand in for them all – though it has always been one of my favourites, featuring as it does premature burial, madness, diabolical twists, and a magnificently fruity performance from Vincent Price – what’s not to like? It was directed by Roger Corman, who clearly understood the link between the Gothic and the unconscious: the claustrophobic, colour-saturated narrative continually trembles on the lip of nightmare, and even now it still provides a couple of genuine chills. In this clip we see the pendulum in full, terrifying swing. (What I notice as an adult, in fact, is what a hefty piece of equipment it clearly was: apparently the actor strapped beneath it had to wear a sort of metal cummerbund underneath his shirt, just in case…)

Quatermass and the Pit (1967)

Watch the trailer on YouTube

This film contains so many elements that are close to my heart – London history, archaeology, alien conspiracy theories, poltergeists, telekinesis, urban myth – that if I was ever somehow to be translated into a movie, this is the one I would be. I must have seen it only once or twice when I was a child, but it made a huge impression on me – though, as with The Singing Ringing Tree, it always gives me shock to watch it now and realise it’s in colour. It was scripted by the brilliant Nigel Kneale, whose other screenplays include a memorable BBC adaptation of The Woman in Black (I watched that one Christmas and threw up my turkey dinner in fright). When perusing the map of the London Underground I sometimes want to look for the film’s fictional station, Hobbs End. And I can never see an urban building site without thinking of the story’s climax, where heroic Dr Roney destroys the giant horned devil that has reared up in the sky by swinging a metal crane into it. Genius. This link is to the film’s over-excited trailer.

The Lavender Hill Mob (1951)

Watch the trailer on YouTube

This is another great London film, which makes lovely use of many different locations in the city (some of them clearly still devastated from the bombs of the Second World War). I’ve chosen it partly for its own sake – it’s a perfect little film – but also to represent Ealing comedies generally, which contain some more of my favourite movies: The Man in the White Suit, Kind Hearts and Coronets, Passport to Pimlico, and The Ladykillers. The genre was often in my mind while I was writing The Night Watch. I wanted with that novel to sort of open up a little tear in the fabric of British social history, and insert my characters into it. So the book contains many tiny Ealing echoes – with its heroine Kay, for example, working at an ambulance station in Pimlico, and having a home on Lavender Hill, in a house which (for me) recalls the teetering bomb-damaged house of The Ladykillers… This is a link to the film’s trailer, which captures all its gentle humour, its distinctly post-war celebration of ‘little’ people with big ambitions.

A Star is Born (1954)

Watch a clip on YouTube

Back in 2008 I was approached by the BFI to nominate a film that I would save for future generations; and the film I chose was this one. Like all the best musicals, it’s really a ‘film with music’ – though it stretches that conceit to the limit, being full of dizzyingly extended numbers and songs within songs. But it’s also a fiercely intelligent movie about the movie industry itself, and it features two glorious stars, Judy Garland and James Mason. It’s a serious tear-jerker, and I can never watch it without sobbing; I’m not sure I’d want to play it too many times, all alone on a desert island. This clip, however, I can watch again and again. I love the casualness of the setting, with the band fooling around at the end of a working night. Esther’s at the high point of her art here, belting it out simply for the love of it; by comparison, the songs she’ll be made to sing later, as the big star Vicky Lester, are trite and stressful. The gestures are theatrical, the lyrics are all about longing and regret; the performance is rendered extra poignant by what we know about Judy’s own future… Then she gives that beautiful saving giggle, right at the end.

The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975)

It's just a jump to the left...

I remember exactly when I saw this film, and how I came to see it. I had watched Fame, the movie, when I was sixteen, and there’s a bit where one of the students goes to see The Rocky Horror Picture Show – you see the film going on in the cinema, with the audience joining in. I had never heard of the movie, didn’t know a thing about it, but with the unerring instinct of the small-town teenage self-inventor I thought: That’s for me! When my boyfriend and I made a trip to London a year or so later, I tracked down a cinema that seemed to have Rocky Horror and Young Frankenstein on perpetual loop. We went, we saw it, and it confirmed something I was already beginning to suspect: that queer people could be cooler, funnier and much, much sexier than straights. I’ve seen the film many times since then; recently it has begun to feel like a period piece, a little bit tiresome. But I shall love it for ever, and I often play the songs; they never fail to cheer me up. This clip provides lyrics, so you can sing along! And remember: It’s just a jump to the left…

Alien (1979)

Watch a clip on YouTube

I can still recall the stir this film caused when it appeared, though that must have been several years before I actually saw it; it was the kind of movie that got talked about in the school playground. If it looks a bit generic now, that’s only because it’s been so influential. It seemed to reinvent the sci-fi genre – its grungy spaceship, manned by a sweaty, unheroic, squabbling crew, creating a template that’s been followed by many movies since. I love this film for many reasons. It offers a proper narrative, with the gradual build-up of mood and intrigue. It has a wonderfully strong (and fabulously grimy) female lead, in the form of Sigourney Weaver’s Ripley. It’s a brilliant modern Gothic (really an offspring of The Pit and the Pendulum, with the same preoccupation with dankness, darkness, repression, possession, simply transferred to a hi-tech setting). And it takes its subject with beautiful seriousness, drawing its motifs from popular culture yet treating them with artistry and emotional realism. In that, it resembles some of the other great horror movies of the 1970s – The Exorcist, say, and The Omen. This clip captures one of its most game-changing moments.

Brief Encounter (1945)

Watch a clip on YouTube

I first saw this as a young teenager, perhaps on a Saturday afternoon, when, in those days, old black-and-white movies were regularly shown on tv. I’ve watched it many times since then, and have found different things in it at different moments. Like The Lavender Hill Mob it seems to me to be a perfect film, in the sense that all its elements are in exactly the right place. And though it’s easy to make fun of the stiff-upper-lipness of it, I always find watching it a rather agonising experience – it’s so impossible for its heroine, Laura, to find a place, unobserved, away from the demands and responsibilities of family and community, in which simply to think and to feel. It was scripted by Noel Coward, who as a homosexual man in pre-Wolfenden Britain must have known a bit about the perils of forbidden desire. But the film is about class as much as about sex – about the extremity of passion that can be contained in a genteel life, and in a middlebrow form (something I’ve explored myself, I suppose, in The Paying Guests). This clip is of the final few minutes of the film: it uses camera work in a really interesting way, to point up the intense interiority of Laura’s story – and it employs the small, prosaic detail of her disarranged hair to absolutely devastating effect.

Cabaret (1972)

Watch a clip on Youtube

This film had a huge impact on me when I first saw it on tv at the age of about fourteen – partly, I think, because of its distinctly queer allure. (Brian: ‘Screw Maximilian!’ Sally: ‘I do.’ Pause. Brian, laughing: ‘So do I.’ I remember being absolutely electrified by that moment, back in 1980!) I still think it’s one of the best musicals ever – though what strikes me most now is how youthful its stars are (and, in the case of Michael Yorke, how achingly beautiful). This clip might seem a rather unimaginative choice, given how lush and visually exciting some of the film’s other musical moments are. But, in all sorts of ways, it forms a nice counterpoint to the earlier clip from A Star is Born – and the song is one of my all-time favourites. I find it hard to admit to admiring Sally Bowles. She represents all the things I’ve striven hard not to be in my life: sleazy, annoying, feckless, selfish, irresponsible, a show-off. Secretly, however, I’d like to be her…

Sarah first shared her Desert Island Movies in conversation with Jo Botting at London's Cinema Museum. To find out more, visit their website and follow them on Twitter @CinemaMuseum.

Sarah Waters’ The Night Watch is adapted for the stage for the first time, for the Royal Exchange Theatre, Manchester, by Olivier-nominated playwright Hattie Naylor and is directed by Exchange Artistic Director Sarah Frankcom. This World Premiere opens on 19 May and runs until 18 June.

Details here

Evan Davies, Sarah Waters and Sir Ian McKellan at the 2015 Stonewall Awards.

Sarah Waters was named Writer of the Decade at the Stonewall Awards, in November, in a ceremony hosted by Ian McKellen at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. Sarah was presented with the award by Evan Davis.

For further information on Stonewall visit their website.

Photograph © Andy Tyler

The adaptation of Sarah Waters’ debut novel, Tipping the Velvet, has now opened at the Lyric Hammersmith!

The play opened on the 19th September and runs to the 24th October and has been receiving rave reviews from those who have seen already  – for tickets and more information visit the Lyric website

This new adaptation of the novel by acclaimed playwright Laura Wade (Posh, Royal Court/West End) has been in the planning for four years and is being directed by Lyndsey Turner (Chimerica, Almeida/West End).

Sarah was recently interviewed talking about the adaptation, along with Laura Wade, by the Independent – you can read the interview here

The play will also be running in Edinburgh at the Edinburgh Lyceum on the following dates:

w/c 26 October

w/c 02 November

w/c 09 November

w/c 16 November

Final performance: Saturday 21 November 2015

A prize for the intrepid reader who can provide us with old period photos of some of the spots in Sarah Waters’ The Paying Guests!

Sarah Waters is passionate about London and that passion shows in her novels, where London figures as strongly as her characters. The Paying Guests is set in 1922 in south London and features many local landmarks. Below we've listed some of those that appear early on in the novel – including Champion Hill where it’s set – along with relevant extracts from the book.

Photos of these places are not always easy to find, but we'd love to see 1920s photos of these locations or others from the book such as: Walworth Road, of Horseferry Road, Strutton Ground, Clerkenwell, Lambeth Police Court, The Old Bailey, Blackfriars Bridge.

So here's your chance to get researching – like Sarah Waters did when writing The Paying Guests – and win her books.

CHAMPION HILL

'The grand houses opposite had a Sunday blankness to them – but then, they had that every day of the week. Around the corner there was a large hotel, and motor-cars and taxi-cabs occasionally came this way to and from it; sometimes people strolled up here as if to take the air. But Champion Hill on the whole, kept itself to itself. The gardens were large, the trees leafy. You would never know, she thought, that grubby Camberwell was just down there. You’d never guess that a mile or two north lay London, life, glamour, all that.’

GOLDEN DOMES CINEMA, DENMARK HILL

‘She had – what did she have? Little successes in the kitchen. The cigarette at the end of the day. Cinema with her mother on a Wednesday . . .

“I suppose we might have asked Mrs Barber to come along with us today.”

Her mother looked doubtful. “Mrs Barber? To the picture-house?”

“You’d rather we didn’t?”

. . .In any case, the programme that week was disappointing. The first few films were all right, but the drama was a dud, an American thriller with a plot full of holes. She and her mother slipped away before the final act, hoping not to draw the notice of the small orchestra – Mrs Wray saying, as she often did, what a pity it was that the pictures nowadays had so much unpleasantness in them.’

RUSKIN PARK

‘She and Mrs Barber settled on their destination – Ruskin Park, just down the hill, the most ordinary, small, unthrilling, neat and tidy place, with flower-beds and tennis courts and a stand for the band on Sundays . . .

The park had a charm today that she couldn’t recall it ever having had before. Its very neatness seemed appealing, everything in such perfect trim, the lawns clipped, the bed of gaudy flowers like icing piped on a cake  . . .

They moved on at a livelier pace – making now for the band-stand, a quaint octagonal pavilion with a red tiled roof. They crossed the gravel, climbed the steps, and the wooden floor must have made Mrs Barber think of dancing: she went across it in the slow twirls of a graceful, unpartnered waltz.’

BRIXTON ROLLER SKATING RINK

‘She found herself at the colourful entrance to the Brixton Roller Skating Rink . . .

The building was huge, modern, charmless, like a giant church hall. The bunting that hung from the rafters was in faded Armistice colours, and the songs were mild old things from thirty or forty years before… It was still the school holidays, and children were darting like minnows, but there were courting couples too, and girls in pairs and groups, even the occasional game old lady… Every so often someone flailed like a windmill and went down, to cheers and hoots and sympathetic laughter; they’d pick themselves up, sheepish, hitting the chalk from their knees and behinds . . .

And in amongst them all glided Frances and Lillian, getting the hang of it, picking up speed . . . It was a lark, pure, childish.’

FRANCES’ JOURNEY FROM CAMBERWELL TO CENTRAL LONDON

‘She caught a bus as far as Vauxhall, and from there she crossed the river and wandered north, taking any street that caught her eye. She loved these walks through London. She seemed, as she made them, to become porous, to soak in detail after detail; or else like a battery, to become charged. .. She did her shopping at the market stalls of Strutton Ground, going from one stall to another before committing herself… She found a ‘cosy corner’ café and bought herself a hot lunch: eggs, chips, bread and butter, all for a shilling and sixpence, including a penny tip for the waitress.

There were no smart shops once she has crossed Oxford Circus. London made one its costume changes, like whipping off a cloak; it became a shabby muddle of pianola sellers, Italian grocers, boarding-houses, pubs. But she liked the names of the streets: Great Castle, Great Titchfield, Riding House, Ogle, Clipstone . . .’

Send us your links or photos of these or other spots from the novel to [email protected] and the best entry will win a complete set of Sarah Waters' novels.

Good luck!

The Booksellers Association of UK and Ireland (The BA) today announced the winners for the Independent Bookshop Week Book Award 2015 (IBW Book Award), which is supported by independent bookshops across the country, and we are delighted to announce that Sarah Waters won in the adult category for The Paying Guests!

There were ten adult titles on the shortlist, which was selected by independent booksellers from nominations put forward by publishers. The other winners were Sally Nicholls in the Children's Fiction category for An Island of Our Own, and Salvatore Rubbino in the Children's Picture Book Category for A Walk in Paris.

Meryl Halls, Head of Membership Services, Booksellers Association, said: “The judges lunches were very lively affairs as they talked through the incredibly strong shortlists with passion, intelligence and a lot of enthusiasm. The winners of each category soon emerged as strong favourites and the judges were unanimous in their choices. On behalf of the Booksellers Association, I’d like to congratulate Sarah, Sally and Salvatore on winning this year’s awards.”

The Adult Category was judged by Patrick Neale (Chair); Emma Corfield (Book-ish, Crickhowell); Paul Wallace (David’s, Letchworth); Patrick Gale (author and 2008 IBW Book Award winner) and Cathy Rentzenbrink (Books Editor, The Bookseller).

Sarah Waters said: “It was a great honour to be on the shortlist for the Adult Category of the IBW book award, alongside so many fantastic authors and books. To have won is a huge thrill. I am absolutely delighted.”

Sarah Waters’ debut novel, Tipping the Velvet, is to be adapted for the stage as part of the Lyric Hammersmith’s new season.

The play opens this autumn, and will run from 18th September to 24th October.

This new adaptation of the novel by acclaimed playwright Laura Wade (Posh, Royal Court/West End) has been in the planning for four years. It will be directed by Lyndsey Turner (Chimerica, Almeida/West End).

For tickets and more information visit the Lyric website