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Val McDermid
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Just listed to the program. Amazing! I've never heard about the Chalet School novels -- but I don't think we saw them in the U.S.
Here's a program on BBC Radio Scotland featuring Val McDermid:My Life in 5 Books
Val McDermid
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01394vt
Description:
Treat yourself to a treat from the BBC Radio Scotland archives in this delightful programme where crime writer Val McDermid shares some of her all time favourite books with Stuart Cosgrove. Best selling author Val McDermid grew up in Kirkcaldy then was accepted to read English at St Hilda's College Oxford when she was only 17. Realising that she wasn't suited to a nine to five job Val became a journalist and after training in Devon she worked on national newspapers in Glasgow and Manchester. Following the success of her book Report for Murder published in 1987 Val was able to give up the day job and concentrate on writing, the rest, as they say, is history!
Val picks the following 5 titles and tells Stuart Cosgrove why they are significant books in her life.
1: TREASURE ISLAND by Robert Louis Stevenson
2: THE COLLECTED POEMS by Norman MacCaig
3: THE MURDER AT THE VICARAGE by Agatha Christie
4: SEXUAL POLITICS by Kate Millett
5: INDEMNITY ONLY by Sara Paretsky.
The Chalet School
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b014pzzs
Description:
The crime writer Val McDermid on her love of the Chalet School boarding school novels. She credits them with inspiring her to go to Oxford and becoming a writer. So what did they have that the other boarding school books did not?
Nearly sixty Chalet School novels were published between 1925 and 1970, written by the South Shields novelist, Elinor Brent-Dyer. The school was initially located in Austria, but moved to Guernsey following the Anschluss. It relocated again after the Nazi invasion of The Channel Islands. The books centred on Madge Bettany, the founder of the school, and her young sister Joey, its first pupil. The books dealt with financial hardship, illness and politics, which Val argues, is absent from most other boarding school novels of the period.