yilin - 2002-11-10 0:06:00
| 1934 - 1945 | ||||
| Aidan Chambers was born in the country just outside Chester-le-Street | ||||
| seven miles north of Durham City on 27 December 1934. He was an only | ||||
| child, his father was a skilled woodworker and a keen gardener, his | ||||
| mother stayed at home, endlessly doing housework. His other male |  | |||
| relatives were coal miners, his many aunts worked as maids in hotels and | ||||
| as shop assistants. There were five books in the home: a Bible, a small | ||||
| dictionary, handbooks about health and house repairs, and a collection | ||||
| of Aesop's Fables with coloured illustrations. Aesop's were the first | ||||
| stories Aidan heard read, while he looked at the pictures. Otherwise, | ||||
| reading, apart from the daily paper, was not a family occupation. There | ||||
| were no other children nearby except a girl, Marion, six months older. Up | ||||
| to the age of ten, when his family moved to another town, they were | With Marion, aged about 3, | |||
| brother and sister, friends and lovers. | in a car made for him by | |||
| School was a shock. He and Marion were separated for the first time - a | his father | |||
| traumatic experience from which he thinks he never recovered. The | | |||
| importance of close friendship has been a theme in all his novels. He |  | |||
| liked his infant school teacher because she read a story to the class | ||||
| every morning and made them act it out in the afternoon, accompanied | ||||
| by music improvised on drums, triangles, and toy trumpets. Aidan's best | ||||
| moment was as David slaying Goliath, who was played by the biggest | ||||
| boy and the bully in the class. Otherwise, he had a sorry time. All his life | ||||
| he has disliked figures, so he was always bad at Maths, and he found | ||||
| learning to read difficult. His teachers called him 'slow'. He couldn't read | ||||
| for himself and fluently until he was nine. He vividly remembers the | At nine, the year he was | |||
| evening when at last he could do it. | beaten once a week for | |||
| not getting his sums right. | ||||
| 1945 - 1953 | Liked leather jackets | |||
| Because of his bad start and the poor teaching in his old-fashioned war- | then as now. | |||
| time primary school, he failed the eleven-plus exam, which determined | ||||
| whether or not he went to an academic grammar school or to a non- |  | |||
| academic 'secondary modern'. Just after taking the exam, his family | ||||
| moved to Darlington, a town by the River Tees, on the border between | ||||
| Durham and Yorkshire. There his father became funeral manager of the | ||||
| Co-operative Society. Across the road from their house lived a boy, | ||||
| Alan, who befriended Aidan. Alan read a lot. He made Aidan join the local | ||||
| public library and together they each borrowed two books every week so | ||||
| that they had four to read. Still, it wasn't reading Aidan liked best, but | ||||
| going to the cinema, which he did twice a week, and the local theatre, | ||||
| which was mostly music hall - comedians, magicians, jugglers, acrobats, | On holiday with mother | |||
| singers, leggy girl dancers, novelty acts, which today we'd call a Variety | and father the year | |||
| Show. | he started grammar | |||
| At thirteen he was transferred from secondary modern to the local | school. Great shorts. | |||
| Queen Elizabeth I Grammar School along with fourteen other 'late | ||||
| developers'. It was there that he met the teacher who changed his life, |  | |||
| the school's head of English, Jim Osborn. Jim was a brilliant, if sometimes | ||||
| scary teacher. From him, Aidan learned both the pleasures and the | ||||
| importance of reading great literature. It was Jim who first took him to | ||||
| see performances of Shakespeare's plays, an experience that gave him a | ||||
| life-long love of Shakespeare and of 'serious' theatre. It was Jim who | ||||
| encouraged him to perform in school plays and to learn how to speak in | His room by the | |||
| public by taking part in meetings of the Debating Society. And it was Jim | time he was 18 and | |||
| who persuaded him to buy a book every week and build his personal | about to leave | |||
| library. | home. Embryo of his | |||
| That was how Aidan came across D. H. Lawrence's novel Sons and | work-room now. | |||
| Lovers. For the first time in his life, he read a book in which he found | ||||
| himself and the kind of people he knew. Sons and Lovers is about the | ||||
| growth from childhood to manhood of Paul Morel, whose father is a | ||||
| miner, and whose mother is determined, as Aidan's was, that her son | ||||
| should better himself by education and reading. Everything in the book | ||||
| was like the life Aidan himself knew. It is still the greatest novel ever | ||||
| written about the reality of mine workers' families and English working | ||||
| class life from 1900 to about 1950. As he finished reading the last page | ||||
| for the first time, aged fifteen, Aidan knew that what he would be was a | ||||
| writer of books and plays. He began attempting to write a novel the next | ||||
| day. But, though he wrote constantly, he told no one of his ambition | ||||
| except his girlfriend, Margaret, who lived in a nearby town and with whom | ||||
| he exchanged letters and weekly visits from the time they were fourteen | ||||
| until they were in their early twenties. | ||||
 | ||||
| During his teenage years, Aidan spent most of his | ||||
| school holidays working on the nearby farm of a | ||||
| distant cousin, and walking the moors around | ||||
| Swaledale, above Richmond in Yorkshire - an area he | ||||
| used as the setting for his novel BREAKTIME. | ||||
| 1953 - 1960 | The farmhouse | |||
| By the time Aidan was seventeen, Jim Osborn had decided he was to be a | where he spent | |||
| teacher. But first he had to serve two years compulsory military service | many of his | |||
| in the Royal Navy, where, by a nice irony, he was called a 'Writer' - | holidays from the | |||
| meaning a clerk - in the Supply and Secretariat division. He spent | age of 10 to 18. | |||
| eighteen months working in a naval office in Portsmouth, where there was | ||||
| so little to do that for most of the time he read books bought from a |  | |||
| second-hand bookshop across the road from the office. | ||||
| Then came two years' teacher training at a college attached to London | ||||
| University, where he wrote his first play to be performed and generally | ||||
| enjoyed himself. In 1957, after qualifying, he was appointed English | ||||
| teacher in charge of drama at Westcliff High School for Boys, a grammar | ||||
| school in Southend-on-sea, a weekend holiday resort for East End | ||||
| Londoners, a place full of raunchy fun and famous for having the longest | ||||
| pier in the world. There he sailed his own dinghy, one day almost | His boat 'Guru', | |||
| drowning when it capsized during a sudden storm, a scene he later | model for 'Tumble' in | |||
| recycled in his novel DANCE ON MY GRAVE. He read, went to the cinema, | Dance on my Grave. | |||
| attended the London theatres as often as he could, and was so happy | ||||
| and hard-worked in his job that he wrote very little. It was there he | ||||
| learned that teaching is not a profession for a would-be writer. It requires | ||||
| the same energy you need to write a novel, and is exhausting. | ||||
| During his three years at Westcliff, Aidan made friends with a group of | ||||
| young fellow teachers who happened to be practising Christians. He had | ||||
| always been interested in religion, but as a non-believer. His new friends | ||||
| gradually brought him round to their belief. He started attending a lively | ||||
| Anglo-Catholic church, decided to be confirmed and to investigate the | ||||
| monastic life. For no reason he could explain, the monastic life had | ||||
| always interested him, and he had often thought that, if he were a | ||||
| Christian, he would want to be a monk. If you're going to do something, | ||||
| do it with total commitment and go as deeply in to it as you can. | ||||
| 1960 - 1968 | ||||
| Just at this time, 1960, he heard of a new modern-style Anglican | ||||
| community that was being started by two brothers. The monks would do | ||||
| ordinary jobs such as teachers, social workers and factory hands, | ||||
| anything so long as their work had to do with children or young people. | ||||
| They would live as nearly as possible like the ordinary people around |  | |||
| them. And they would not try to convert anyone except by the example | ||||
| of their own lives. Aidan met the brothers, liked what they told him, | ||||
| resigned from his teaching job and joined the order the week they set up | ||||
| their first monastery in a house in Stroud, Gloucestershire. He used his | ||||
| experience as a monk in his novel NOW I KNOW. | ||||
| For a year he was a novice, learning the monastic ropes. Then he took a | ||||
| job as English teacher in charge of the library and drama at Archway | ||||
| Secondary Modern school, Stroud. It was during his seven years there | ||||
| that Aidan found his audience and published his first books. These were | ||||
| stories and plays written for the pupils he taught. Two of the plays, | ||||
| JOHNNY SALTER and THE CHICKEN RUN, are still in print. He also began to | ||||
| gain a reputation as a teacher and school librarian. He was asked to give | ||||
| talks at teachers' conferences and to write articles and reviews for | ||||
| educational magazines. Soon he was so busy that his monastic life began | ||||
| to suffer. | Brother Aidan in 1965. | |||
| The crunch came in 1967. By then he knew he was not a true-believing | ||||
| Christian. What had attracted him was the glorious old language and | ||||
| theatrical ritual of the church. He also knew he would have to choose | ||||
| between life as a doubting monk or life as a dedicated writer. He could | ||||
| not be both. No contest really. Since the night he finished reading Sons | ||||
| and Lovers he had known he was a writer at heart. So he left the | ||||
| monastery. A year later, in 1968, he resigned from his teaching job, and | ||||
| since then has lived as a free- lance writer, who happens also because of | ||||
| his interest in education to give talks and lectures and workshops for | ||||
| teachers and librarians. | ||||
| 1968 - 2001 | ||||
| The next turning point came in 1975. Having written for young readers for | ||||
| ten years, Aidan finally began the books he had always felt he should | ||||
| write but could never quite get down on paper. The first of these, | ||||
| BREAKTIME, bubbled out like water from a spring. The second became his | ||||
| best-known novel, DANCE ON MY GRAVE. By the time he finished it he | ||||
| knew there would be a sequence of six - novels which are related, like a | ||||
| family, but each one individual and different from the others. Like the first | ||||
| two, NOW I KNOW, THE TOLL BRIDGE, and POSTCARDS FROM NO MAN'S | ||||
| LAND each took at least five years to write. He is busy now on the sixth |  | |||
| book, which he hopes to publish in 2003. | ||||
| When he left the monastery, Aidan decided to go on living in | ||||
| Gloucestershire. But his work often took him to London. It was there that | ||||
| he met an American magazine editor, Nancy Lockwood. From the first | ||||
| time they met they began a conversation which is still continuing. They | ||||
| were married in 1968. In 1969 they started a small publishing company, | ||||
| Thimble Press, in order to produce a magazine edited by Nancy, SIGNAL, | 1970. With Nancy | |||
| which is about children's and youth literature. It soon became | outside their rented | |||
| internationally known and highly regarded by professionals in the field. | cottage in the Cotswolds | |||
 | ||||
| Thimble Press has also published over thirty books | ||||
| on the same subject. For their services to children's | ||||
| books, Aidan and Nancy were honoured with the | ||||
| Eleanor Farjeon Award for 1982. | ||||
| Receiving the Eleanor Farjeon | ||||
| Besides his books, Aidan has edited many books by other writers, has | Award in 1982. | |||
| written for stage, radio and television, and for many newspapers and | ||||
| magazines in both Britain and elsewhere. He is frequently invited to other | ||||
| countries as author and speaker, especially in recent years to Sweden | ||||
| and the Netherlands. He has kept in touch with the teaching of literature. | ||||
| His books THE READING ENVIRONMENT and TELL ME: CHILDREN, READING | ||||
| & TALK resulted from his work with teachers and librarians. | ||||
 | ||||
| But at the centre of everything he does is the writing of his | ||||
| novels and plays and the reading of other people's books. | ||||
| He says he writes because he has to, and reads because | ||||
| he wants to. | ||||
| Of the awards he has received for his work, the one that pleases him the | Caught in the act, | |||
| most is the 1999 Carnegie Medal for POSTCARDS FROM NO MAN'S LAND. | working on Breaktime. | |||
| The Medal is given after a great deal of discussion among British | ||||
| children's and youth librarians. Not only have the public librarians always | ||||
| been a great support to him as a teacher and writer, he knows that | ||||
| without access to every book in the language provided by a free public | ||||
| library service he could never have become the writer and reader that he | ||||
| is. | ||||
 | Forty years on. | |||
| 1998. Sitting | ||||
| where he sat as a | ||||
| young teacher, and | ||||
| where Hal sits | ||||
| with Kari towards | ||||
| the end of Dance | ||||
| on my Grave. | ||||
| More information: | |
| For a long account, including photos, see: | |
| Gale Research publications: 'Aidan Chambers' in Something About the Author: the Autobiographical Series, Vol 12, 1991, pp 37-55. Gale Reasearch has a website, but you pay to use it. Major library systems should hold copies of the book. | |
| FAQs | |
| Is it true that Aidan is not the name you were given by your parents? | |
| Yes. I never liked the two names my parents chose for me and decided that when I became a published writer I'd give myself the name I wanted. In fact, I took it as my monastic name before I was published. (Monks often choose a special name for themselves.) Aidan is the Celtic word for 'fire'. It's associated with Saint Aidan, who founded a monastery around the year 500 AD on Lindisfarne, now often called Holy Island, off the coast of north east England, not far from where I was born. When I was a child, my paternal grandmother (the only reader in the family) told me stories about him. I liked him because he was an imaginative, loving and courageous man. (And don't ask what my rejected names were.) | |
| What do you use when you write? | |
| I write the first draft of novels in pencil on A4 narrow-lined pads. And since NOW I KNOW I've used a word processor for the second draft, writing the text on to pages exactly like I want in the published book. Plays, essays and articles, letters and almost everything else, I write straight on to my word processor. | |
| What are you going to write when you've finished the last of the novels in 'The Dance Sequence'? | |
| Six books about being a new-style old man in the twenty-first century. Old now is not old like it used to be. It's a whole new and uncharted territory of human life. What could be more exciting than to map it in novels? At the present rate of production, I'll have to live till I'm at least 95 with all my faculties intact if I'm to get the job done. I also plan to write more plays - the ones I've sensed in my imagination for years but which I haven't managed to get on to paper so far. | |
| What are your favourite books? | |
| Most of them are on the shelves of my library and are too many to list. But click PERSONAL COLUMN to find out what I'm reading at the moment. | |
| What advice would you give to someone who wants to be a writer? | |
| Read read read. Write write write. | |
| Have you any hobbies? | |
| Never felt the need. I'm such a slow reader and love reading so much that I never had time for hobbies anyway. But I started to learn the piano four years ago. Be glad you don't live next door. | |
| If you weren't a writer, what would you want to be? | |
| A director in the theatre who writes plays. Or a sea captain who writes novels. | |
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