Beryl Bainbridge investigates `what makes a writer'

The question of `what makes a writer' was the subject of the Richard Hillary Memorial Lecture this year, delivered by Ms Beryl Bainbridge on 2 February. The Richard Hillary Memorial Lecture on a literary subject was established by Trinity College as an annual event in 1972 to commemorate Richard Hillary, an undergraduate at the college from 1936–9, who suffered terrible injuries in the Battle of Britain. During his convalescence he wrote My Last Enemy, charting his physical and mental recovery from disfiguring burns, but was tragically killed in a flying accident in 1943. Introducing Ms Bainbridge (pictured left), the President of Trinity College, Michael Beloff, QC, said: `As we enter a new millennium, we are reminded that the Richard Hillary Memorial Lecture is a tribute to a lost generation,' and he spoke of his pleasure at seeing Mrs Denise Patterson in the audience, the Denise of whom Richard Hillary had written in My Last Enemy. Ms Bainbridge began her lecture by speaking of her childhood and upbringing, which she described as a `gift' for a future writer. She told of how her father had become bankrupt in 1926, leading to years of unresolved tension between her parents, and how, as a child, her first job on coming home from school was to turn on the wireless `so that other voices could drown out the voices which might at any moment be raised up in anger'. Comparison of these scenes with the happy photographs from the early years of her parents' marriage had, Ms Bainbridge said, given her an irresistible desire to `uncover the truth—and find out what was happening to me and my surroundings and where those two people on honeymoon in Torquay had gone.' Ms Bainbridge spoke of how she had repeatedly drawn on her childhood for inspiration, following the advice of her first publisher to `stick to what you know, don't have too many characters, and don't go on too long'. All the characters of her early books, she said, were `my brother, myself, my parents, grandparents, and aunts, contained within "accidents" that make the story.' She described her later work as the product of a series of fascinations with `scraps of material', ranging from the idea that Hitler had visited Liverpool at the age of 23, which became Young Adolf (London: Duckworth, 1978), to the fact that Scott of the Antarctic's favourite word was `strenuous', and his eyes changed from blue to mauve when he was aroused, traits immortalised in The Birthday Boys (London: Duckworth, 1991). The lecture concluded with a brief discussion of Ms Bainbridge's forthcoming novel, which will take Dr Johnson as its subject, and a reading from her most recent novel Master Georgie (London: Duckworth, 1998), which was short-listed for the Booker prize. The novel is set during the Crimean War, particularly the siege of Sebastopol, and highlights the role played by the women who followed the army.