 Felly, rwy'n cael ei wneud. I'm Tanya Kirk. I'm the lead curator for fantasy realms of the imagination. It's all very surreal today because we've been working on this for over four years and it opened today and I can't actually believe that it's a real thing. Thanks, that was nice. Fantasy's never been more popular or vibrant or ubiquitous than today and I'm really proud that the library has chosen to showcase it this year. Although it's everywhere, a lot of people don't maybe realise that its roots come from really old forms of storytelling, like fairy tale, folktale and ancient epic and that's something that the library is able to show really well with our collections. I really hope that people learn more about the histories behind fantasy when they come to the exhibition. It's exploded from the page though today and it's taken on forms all across the media. In the exhibition we showcase not only books and manuscripts but also film and TV, costumes, props, artworks, music and I've probably forgotten some things but many other things. We have many British Library treasures on display so you can see for example the original manuscript for Alice's Adventures Underground which would become Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. You can see really early manuscripts like the manuscript of Beowulf and Sir Grain in the Green Knight all in the exhibition but we also have really amazing loans. We've been working with not only institutions but also fantasy creatives all over the world and we're really excited that we've got for example some of the manuscripts from Wizard of Earthsea by Ursula Caila Gwyn which had never been in the UK before. Also Neil Gaiman has very kindly lent us his notebook for his novel Coraline which is also in the exhibition alongside the Alice manuscript. There's some really special things and one thing that I have really loved working on this exhibition is what an amazing community fantasy is. Obviously you get that sense tonight but also just in the gallery it's just such a lovely atmosphere and it's just been a joy to work on it. So it's until 25th February and if you've not been already and even if you have been already come again. Thank you ever so much for coming tonight. I hope you enjoy the rest of the evening. I'm going to hand on to John to introduce our guests. Thank you, Tanya. I just want to welcome everybody watching this event online wherever you are in the world. Around the UK we have the Living Knowledge Library partners who are also doing special screenings tonight so greetings to everybody who's joining us online. If you want to ask a question during the latter part of the conversation that's great in the room you obviously can put your hand up. Those watching online is a form below the screen. Also those watching online if you do want to order any books by tonight speakers is a tab at the top of the screen you can do that. So I'd love to introduce now to the stage obviously the incredible Susan Cooper together with the equally amazing and wonderful Natalie Haines who you all know is a broadcaster and a fantastic writer specialising in re-workings of classical myths such as Stone Blind and Divine Might which are also outside. But now please welcome to the stage Natalie Haines and Susan Cooper. They showed us the exhibition earlier today and it's fantastic. It's just wonderful. It actually is fantastic although I don't think we're going to tonight beat the sound of people gasping with joy. There being a note book of Ursula Keiligwyn in a building near the building you're currently sitting in. I was like yeah you're our people hello. Ladies and gentlemen it gives me an indescribable pleasure to introduce Susan Cooper. She was born and grew up in the UK. She studied at Oxford before becoming a reporter for the Sunday Times. At the age of 25 she began writing a book about three children taking a train to Cornwall. Two books later she was the winner of the Newbury Medal, a Newbury Honor Award and two Carnegie Honor Awards. More recently she has been given the Hans Christian Andersen Award, the Margaret A. Edwards Award and the World Fantasy Award for Lifetime Achievement which I might add she got a decade ago. They thought I'd had it. Proving them wrong again. This year the dark is rising which I know you probably love at least almost as much as I do. Celebrates its 50th birthday. Please join me in welcoming Susan Cooper. Thank you ma'am. So you began writing this series of books without knowing that they would be fantasy novels. In fact without knowing that it would be a series when you wrote Oversea Under Stone you discovered it as you went. That train journey didn't even make the final book. What happened? I was a reporter on the Sunday Times and they had a feature called Mainly for Children which I did a couple of things for just for fun. One day the literary editor of the newspaper came in with a piece of paper and he said you ought to try this. It was a competition for a family adventure story from the publishers of I forget which it was Ernest Ben anyway. They were offering £1,000 as a prize which was more than I earned in a year. So I thought okay I'll try it. I started to write a story about three children going to Cornwall for a holiday as my brother and I had often done. There was a chapter about the train journey and then they get to Cornwall and they met, said my imagination, by a great uncle called Merriman Lyon. I didn't even know he was Merriman Lyon then he was just called Great Uncle Mary. From that point on writing it it became a fantasy and so it wasn't eligible for the prize. I did get published by Jonathan Cape instead but I had no idea it would ever have a sequel. It sort of open ended at the end. We probably both thought it was open ended now and again. Yes, just on the off chance. Shall I go on to the rest of the series? I mean because then there was a gap right? Yes, there was a huge gap. Then my newspaper sent me to America. I ended up marrying an American going to live there. That wasn't for the newspaper, that was... I had three step children. I had two babies. I wrote two adult books. Then one day my husband and I were cross country skiing in Massachusetts. I saw branches sticking up out of the snow looking like buried antlers. I thought I want to write a book about a boy who wakes up on his birthday and finds he can work magic in snow just like this, but in England. I tried to write this book. It didn't work. More years went by. Then one day for some reason I reread Oversea Under Stone and suddenly thought this book about the boy links with that and began thinking about the story, about where it might go and suddenly feeling that no, there's not going to be one more book. There are going to be four more books. I wrote down the titles, which mostly stayed the same. I wrote down who was going to be in each book, where they were going to be set. I wrote the last half page of the last book. For the next six years I wrote all those books. There was an exhibition at the Bodleian in Oxford a few years ago. We had the piece of paper on which I wrote all those titles. We had the page with the last half page. That was the gap. This is an acceptable gap. This raises two questions for me. The first is that you described this as a truly astonishing day when you wrote the outline of all the books and found all the characters. Did you know as you did it that your life was going to change or were you just excited to tell the stories? My second question is this. The snow came first. The very first thing that you had for Darker's Rising was the snow that you were moving through. That came before any other element of it. Thank you, Snow. I think we can all say thank you, Snow at this moment. I find this a really interesting part of the Darker's Rising in particular, of your books in general, is that I think it's so grounded in its setting in Buckinghamshire and yet you wrote it from Massachusetts when you were homesick. That was all out of homesickness. I mean, I was very homesick anyway. So I was living back at home while I was writing the books, which was wonderful. I mean, JB Priestley. It sounds like I've been stalking you, of course, just been reading your essays. JB Priestley told you that you would find you'd write much better about a place when you were away from it. I wonder if this is why Will Stanton's World is so real to all of us, because you're creating it not for your readers actually, first and foremost, but for yourself. Yes, and I think most authors publish for children right for themselves. I did a radio programme with Maurice Sendak once and we both said exactly the same thing. I don't write for children, I write for me. But it was the homesickness driving me through those books, which is perhaps why the link to place is so close. Alan Garner and I are like in this. I mean, he still lives in his place, which is Cheshire, and mine was in my head remembering, but the essence of the books is place. Yes. I have this theory, which might be wrong, but I think we have our best ideas, generally as people, particularly as writers, when our bodies are doing something that's hard but not too hard so our minds can run free. Is cross-country skiing the right thing to do? Because I don't live somewhere that cold. I have to go for a run for this. You're asking the wrong person, I'm a terrible skier. I mean, it worked out though. I'm grateful to it. So, Hunter Coom in Darker's Rising, the place is fictional, but it's also real. Hunter Coom Lane is an actual road, half way between Slyr and Maidenhead. And Doarney is the place. Doarney is a village. The church is still there in Doarney. Hunter Coom Manor is still there, though it's no longer a manor. It's some sort of institution, I think. But of course the fields and the whole area of my childhood is now covered in concrete and motorway. So I can't go find it. No. And you took a real farmer and borrowed his farm. Because this feels like it can't be true. You were a teenage raspberry picker in Buckinghamshire. Which oddly isn't the title of your autobiography. I find it fully baffling. The Night Young. I think this is a really interesting point about Darker's Rising in particular though, because you've said that critics call it high fantasy or have called it high fantasy. I think the specific magic of the Darker's Rising is the fact that its fantasy elements occupy the same time and space as the real world. It just somehow exists above them. Sometimes it shimmers over them so you can see it. I think that's what makes it so magical about a combination. I think that combination is again in Alangana and in Philip Pullman too. That we all write about the real world with time and magic, for want of a better word, coming into it. We don't make American fantasy writers like Ursula mostly invent whole new worlds, I think. British writers certainly us three use the real world. Of course anything can happen to any one of you in that case. I find myself wondering, since you were taught at Oxford by Tolkien and C.S. Lewis, do you think they might have set you on a path to becoming an overlay? They certainly set anybody who read English at Oxford in the 1950s was certainly set on a path by those two, not because of what they wrote, but because Tolkien in particular had control of the English syllabus and it stopped at 1832. We didn't study the Victorians, we didn't study anybody modern. It was Beowulf, Gawain, Mallory, everything medieval, Chaucer of course. But that made a huge difference I think because it focused us on folktale myth. I'm not a fan of Narnia, I hadn't read, I don't think he'd written them then. Tolkien, we knew his books, he was about to write the third one. But I don't think they influenced me, particularly me, because what do I know, I just know about me as a writer. But that influence on the teaching is huge. Were you interested in that category of literature before you got there? Yes, yes, that's true because I was a child of World War II when they were publishing a quarter of the usual books that were published for children. Also, you didn't go to bookshops. That war focused you on what was at home, and so I read folktale. My parents had a 20 volume set of dickens, so I used to pick out the bits I could understand, but otherwise it was early stuff. This explains, I've always wondered in that bit in Silver on the Tree where Simon apologises for using the abbreviation APs and Broncorrectum and says we read dickens here too in Wales. So it turns out that was secretly you. But this is a really important part of your storytelling is myth and folklore from the whole of the UK, actually. King Arthur, of course, but her and the hunter, the marihloid. English, Welsh, Cornish, myth are all in your stories. Why are these, why is this folklore, why are these particular stories so important, so elemental? Because I'm English, because I focus. What put you into Greek? I mean, it's the best and worst answer. I had a really brilliant teacher. And the nice thing about it, actually, is that I don't think he particularly liked me, which was fair enough because I was really annoying. At no point changed what a good teacher he was. He was just brilliant. He was funny. He was deadpan. And we were pretty irritating, I would imagine. But there was the thrill of a different alphabet, which felt like a secret code. And then, I mean, the thing with learning French, which had to do at the same time, is that you learn to say, you know, please could you tell me the way to the customs house. And then you do Greek and you learn to say, sing goddess of the rage of Achilles. And you're like, yeah, these are the guys. Excuse me, these guys are for me, thanks. So that's why. But you didn't have any wrath of Achilles. So I don't know what you were thinking. I mean, folk songs are a big part, actually, which I suppose is closer, isn't it, to Homer in some ways. So things like the hunting of the Wren make a really important thematic threat. Yes. I'm just obsessed with my native country. I love this. I wondered if we could talk a little bit about your idea of the dark and the light, your way of considering good and evil, being locked in this unending war. It began, you said, when you were a child during World War II. World War II had an enormous effect because, I mean, I was 10 when it ended, so I was what for when it began. And so the formative things are being, there was an anti-aircraft post at the end of our road because the main railway line to the west ran from London past just about there. And the Germans were always trying to hit it. So an awful lot of nights were spent when the air raid siren goes and your parents pull you out of bed and take you down to the air raid shelter, which everybody's dad had built in the first year of the war underneath the back lawn. And we would sit there, and my brother and I, and my mother were reading to us by candlelight, and the candle flame would shake every time a bomb fell, and it would get closer and closer, things like that. And the fact that what we collected as kids was bits of shrapnel from wherever the bombs had fallen the night before. And if you grow up like that at that young, that early in age, then you have this constant image of us and them of the dark and the light, and the dark in particular because they always came at night. And that doesn't go away. So that's probably why I ended up writing about the dark and the light. But you don't approach it in a remotely dewy-eyed way, if you don't mind me saying so. There's a really beautiful moment later in the series. I don't want to spoil it in case everyone hasn't read it right through to the end, where Will acknowledges that the light has this kind of coldness at its centre too, that in order to fight, you have to be willing to sacrifice. And I wondered if that had also developed a feeling when you were a child. That, I don't know. Not consciously, certainly. I don't think. Well, no, that's not true because that's what happens when the bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. That was the light behaving like the dark in order to win. And there's something I had Miriam say, which says, where is it? I'm not sure I can read it without my specs. Don't mind. They might not help. The struggle between good and evil goes on around us all the time. Like two armies fighting. And sometimes one of them will seem to be winning and sometimes the other. But neither has ever triumphed altogether nor ever will, for there is something of each in every man. That's what the books say, I think, if they say anything about the dark and the light, they will always be with us because they are inside us. And he says something better towards the end of the sequence which I can't quote because I couldn't find it. When he more or less says it is up to you, says to the children, that the hope for a good world depends on what you do, which, again, because there is the mixture in each one of us. There is no happy ending. There is no eukatastrophe. But you can make things better. Does moral complexity running throughout the book? And I think, in a way, I wonder if it's at least in part because Will is from a big family, he's the youngest of nine. I was trying to think of other examples of narratives where someone realises they have magic powers at a certain point in their childhood where they are part of a big and happy family because normally they're an orphan, or at least one parent is missing. Essentially we give the child the freedom to go and explore their magic, but Will has that freedom because of the ability to pause time that both the light and the dark have. But actually there is something incredibly poignant about the fact that when he discovers his powers, which should be a wonderful moment and is, he loses something. Yes, he becomes lonely because he's different and he's never been different. No. Boy. I know. But I mean I think it's rare to have that big family. Is that because you were writing with your own big family? I haven't thought about that. No, I haven't got a big family. I've just got one brother. I mean you literally had three teenage stepchildren and two babies. That's quite a big family. I've only got one brother. That's massive. I didn't grow up with them. But I mean I find it an incredibly beautiful moment. In fact we heard the secrets around that earlier. When the skylight falls in near the start, I'm not spoiling it, near the start of darkest rising and Paul comes up to help Will and to fix the skylight and he says go and sleep in my bed and it's such a beautiful moment. It's quite unusual for your narrator voice to almost step in. Normally it's quite quiet, but you wrote on page eight in case anyone's checking their coffee about Will. He knew he could not stay alone in the room where he belonged. It is entirely worth that noise. Correct. Correct British Library. It's one of the most beautiful sentences I think anyone's ever written about. What it means to be a child who suddenly realises they don't fit in their family quite any more. Yeah. True. So there. You say good heavens if you want. I'm not even slightly taken back. I wondered if we could talk a little bit about the rules that govern magic in your world and the world of the darkest rising. You're really specific about the places that are exempt from magic. So running water can't hold it. For example, time travellers are always both in their own time and in the time they've travelled to. Does fantasy need rules for its stories to work? I think it does. I think you have to know what they are yourself. I could not possibly recite to you the rules behind these five books. I do know that when a perfectly terrible film was made from the darkest rising, I had written to the director and producers saying there are certain rules about the magic in this book that you should remember. Yes. And they just forgot the whole thing. They broke all the rules. I'm amazed they read the book, frankly. It didn't look like it. I judge from the trailer alone. We'll forget that. I wasn't going to bring it up. I've got a friend who, when they want to make me cover my ears and cry in sadness, will say, and I feel bad even saying it out loud, but I'm just going to say in an American accent, Will was just an ordinary boy, which is how that trailer begins. Right, exactly. And I'm like that. You can distract me from any problem merely by doing that. If you want to do it in a positive way, offer me a piece of toffee. In a negative way, that will work. Bonus fact for you all. I have to tell you the thing that Philip Fawrman said to me in a letter. I was writing to him about the fact that I'd had this bad film asking him what his experience would be. In the end of the letter he said, hope I can get this right, hope I can get this right. What can we do? We really can't do anything in the long run. We can just hope that the person, Kate, tell me if I'm getting this wrong. The person to whom you entrust your precious Ming bars is not an orangutan. We got the orangutan. Philip didn't. Orangutans are good at other things. In fairness, I think that slightly undersells them. We cannot possibly talk about the darkest rising without discussing Merriman Lion, one of the great enigmatic forces for good in fiction. His appearance is such an important part of him. His hawk nose, his shock of white hair. I wondered if he was based on a real person. I steal faces for my characters but only strangers. I never pick anyone I know. I don't think he's based on anybody. It's just the way he turned up. They do turn up, don't they? Yes, and then you think, oh, well, this is how the character looks. Elbow themselves into a bit of the story. You're like, well, all right, it seems to be working. Halfway through the story, you think you know where you're going and somebody turns up, yes? Yes. It's extraordinary. You just have to make space. We're lucky. I wondered what you read when you were a child, aside from Dickens and Chaucer. You mentioned Arthur Ransom, that idea of children going on an adventure without adults quite so close behind them. It's very present in over some stone perhaps. It's funny that the one set of books I had was Arthur Ransom, who is firmly realistic. I think it's partly because that was what was being published then. It's very hard for me to put my finger on anything that I read when I was a kid and say, oh, yes, obviously, that influenced me to write fantasy. Except for the fact that there were all these folk tales and fairy stories because there was nothing else to read. Not a very good answer. An excellent answer, as they all are. I love the fact that we get a sense at crucial moments in Will's awakening as an old one and also in his quest throughout the books, that the old ones are around the whole world thinking about him and sending him messages and sometimes objects. I wondered if you had ever been tempted to do a spin-off. Maybe in Massachusetts or something, just somewhere you might know where we could see how the other old ones were getting on. No. From time to time, I've tried to see if I could think of a story that would bring Will back, but it's never happened. I don't think it's not meant. He's busy. He's done enough. He's saved the world. Merriman is one of the most opaque characters that we find. I think it's fair to say that there have been many authority figure, kind of grandfatherly, great uncle-ish figures who owe huge debt to him, I think. Yeah. I wondered if you had... I wondered if this was a kind of figure that you had in your life when you were a child, this kind of strange and enigmatic uncle or teacher or parent who would suddenly appear and disappear at Will. I think Merriman owes more than I ever realised before to my grandfather, my mother's father, who was that sort of authority figure who came to stay with us once when I was 12 and took me to the cinema, which rarely happened, to see a film that was called in Britain A Matter of Life and Death, The Archers. And that had a huge influence. That was a fantasy. Yes. It's a beautiful film. And Grandad was an enigmatic fella. I just think he was lurking at the back of my imagination, probably, but it's not a model. I mean, he didn't look like that. There is a point in Oversea Understone when Barney, the youngest, realises that Great Uncle Mary's name is Merriman, and he's Merriman Lyon, and he says something like Merriman Lyon, Merlion Merlin. And it was at that moment that my head was saying that. That's what you've been doing. You didn't know up until then. Wow, this guy's name is really unusual. I was thinking this when the writer appears disguised as a sort of innocent jewellery customer, and his name is Mitterthyn. I googled it. It's the only example of it anywhere online. It's just yours. I thought it must have a secret message in it. I'd have to look in my notebooks. Are they at the Bodleon? Have I got to wait? No, they're in Toronto. This brings me to a question that I think we probably all really need to know the answer to, which is that sacred and magical objects, the six signs, of course, in the darkest rising, and the grail for the drew children, they are protective, they are talismanic, they are powerful, they're deeply desirable, everybody wants them, but also they're described in a way which makes them, as objects, seem deeply desirable. It's perfectly plausible that somebody would break into the British Museum to steal the grail, for example, as happens at the beginning of Greenwich. The six signs are so beautifully described. I wondered if you knew how they would all look when you started the book and where they would all be found and how they would all be found or if you discovered that on the way. I found out as I went along. I didn't have any idea, I don't think, where each sign would be found or even what they were, I think, until I was writing the book. But this is what we do, doesn't it? I know you're using real characters from Greek myth, but then you take off and you find out things about them. Absolutely do. The only information you've got is a vase painting. I'd better fill in some narrative. Then this brings me to the question that I feel we really all need to know the answer to, which is, which of the six signs would you most like to own? I can't answer that question. I always think it's the sign of fire for me and then when I reread it every time I'm like, yeah, a sign of fire and then the last minute I go, no, it's water. I think it probably would be water. I love that we get the renewal of the sign of wood too, that it feels like such an important part of the story that renewal happens, that the cold and the dark come and then the light and the warmth can only come afterwards. It feels like, in a way, that's the most important metaphorical sign. It probably is. It's more complicated than the others. It is. Because it's live. The others are not. Yeah. But you're very alert to the different qualities of wood and things like that when you write about this. The children are like, well, you could use oak though, because there are really ancient things of oak and it's like, no, it has to be this kind of wood that needs renewing. I find it really pleasing. One of the things I have in common with Rob McFarlane is this thing about trees. He is mad about trees. Obsessed. Fully obsessed. I think that sense of renewal is something that I wanted to ask you, and then I'm going to ask Simon and Rob to join us on stage and talk to us a little bit about adapting dark is rising in their experiences with this book. But I wondered if that sense of renewal, it seems, in a way, almost at odds with the idea that neither the dark or the light can ever win. We've only ever got them rising and falling, but there's also this cyclical process, the changing of the year, and the books actually take place across quite a short time. We're in the summer when the drew children are in Cornwall, and then it's midwinter for dark is rising, but we're only a few months later in April for, yeah, April for Greenwich, and then October for Grey King. So it's actually a relatively short span of time, but we do get the sense of the seasons passing, and that, it seemed to me, was an important part of the narrative. Just because it's an important part of life, I think. I mean, the books, I think those books are basically about time, an examination of time and how little we understand it. Time for us on Earth is renewal, it's the cycle. Whereas if you start thinking about the time space continuum, it gets extremely complicated, and we don't know anything about it, that is a very incomplete answer. Actually, it was making me think of the moment where the dark is outside the church, screaming outside, and the vicar kind of bravely appeals to faith, and the old ones are just like, I mean if you want vicar. That makes you feel better, yeah, sure, but they're really... Then we'll realise he has to just stop him from thinking. If he does, yeah. Well, saves time. If you'll forgive the pun. Speaking of which, can I therefore ask you, Rob and Simon, to come and join us? Ladies and gentlemen, would you please welcome Simon McBurney and Rob McFarlane. Rob, as I'm sure you already know, is writer and fellow of a manual college, Cambridge. He is the author of The Old Ways, What a Coincidence. Of Landmarks of Lost Words and Underland. Simon McBurney is actor, writer, director, co-founder of Complicitay. I've discovered my absolute horror in 1983, which was, of course, five years ago. And between them they made this wonderful adaptation of The Dark Is Rising, for which I blessed them. That's very good, because hearing you in your correspondence is a great opportunity for hearing you in your correspondence with Philip Pullman. I thought, here are the two orangatans. But I, who were entrusted with the Ming bars, but I felt like saying we had opposable thumbs, didn't we? Yeah, we did, yeah. We were able to carry the Ming bars and place it very gently down on this pedestal. Next to your swing. Next to our swing. So what I really want to know is, when did you first read Dark Is Rising? Rob, I know you've been a fan for a long time, because you have done a Twitter read-along for it very wisely. Yes, I've been a fan for a very long time since 1989, when, as we all know, history ended. That was the summer that I first read The Dark Is Rising and all the other novels in the series, and then I read them again the next year and the next year. And here I am at 47. And I think I'm right that I... You introduced it to me. I hadn't read it before, so I first read it on the read-along. So that was really the... Yeah, that was my introduction. But then you read it aloud. Then I read it aloud to my children, my son is here. We read... I just started to read them and read them and read them out, but I read them all aloud and reading them aloud. I suppose when the possibility of doing this came up my first thought was the way that Susan her voice and how the story, how the narrative draws you in is so extraordinary. It's just the most extraordinary piece of storytelling. And that had to be a part of it. I really love that you are reading them to your son. Not least that your son is here because my first encounter with these books when I was too small to read them was having my mum read them to me and my mum is here. But I think it was so unfound my children because I think I was enjoying it more than maybe. I'm tired, Daddy. Stay up. It's getting completely into it. I'm going to read another chapter. I have to read the chapter again when they were awake the next night. Every author published for children owns an enormous debt to mums and dads who read to their children at night. When you get into a book so much simply I mean it's absolutely true. I knew that they were falling asleep. In fact I think they probably knew that they were asleep but they kept on reading it. Allow to me in the room. It was also a pleasure to read it because the writing is so extraordinary. It has so many layers in it. It was a fantastic pleasure to read it a second time the next night. Because you'd find all sorts of things that you hadn't found on the first reading. It's really delicious, delicious writing. At the risk of speaking for your son we haven't given him a microphone so sorry. I can honestly say I really dark as rising every year but I don't always have time to get to the end of the series so I don't always make it as far as silver on the tree every year. When I read that and when I read Grey King I hear my mum's voice doing it. It's like extra time travel on top of your time travel. It is the most miraculous thing. Parents who read to your children thank you, you're doing a tremendous job. Can I just say one thing about reading aloud? Speaking aloud is so important in these books. These are books in which to say something into the air is to give it a force that it doesn't necessarily have when it's written down. Songs are sung that take powerful form when they are sung. For us so many people know the chance when the dark comes right and six shall turn it back three from the circle and three from the track. So these things go deep and to people making it into sound. This is the most wonderful invitation and of course we brought music to it that was made of it. Johnny Flynn is here tonight. It is wonderful music. He was part of a group of extraordinary musicians who revisited those songs made them new again as you made them new again. These ancient songs Adam Leigh bound and it's one of the oldest carols we have along with the Corpus Christi carol and carried them across time. The music was so important to just, yeah. When you were writing though you wrote music into these books deeply into them. Well it's just part of life and part of my consciousness so I'm not saying this very well. Yes, music is all through them. Yeah. So this raises an interesting question I think which is that I wondered if you two had approached the book differently because I have to admit I assumed that you would have come at it because of the extraordinary landscape descriptions because that's the kind of writer you are and the kind of person you are and I assumed that Simon would have come at it hearing the sound of it because that's the kind of performer you are but it turns out that you were both in the music of it all the time. Yeah and I think curiously it's probably the reverse it was Rob who was saying it's the sound the sound is going to be extraordinary you've got the opportunity of getting the steps and the snow we don't need the words here and it was me going no, no, no we need the words and it was we tried, I mean we really went through a process of trying we went to a remarkable place called Hawkewood which is outside Stroud centre for future thinking and we is a beautiful huge sort of Victorian manna with huge trees and fast elm tree there as well and you can stay there and we stayed several nights with actors and so on and we just tried things out we didn't, it wasn't Rob initially with incredible beauty and generosity made some suggestions made some adaptations but then we took those and threw them up in the air and then we went back to the books so it was really trying to find what I was saying before sort of what was propelling Susan underneath everything that she's been saying about but about the love for about the memory of that land and how that, there's an extraordinary sense of I suppose a kind of what you might call almost and I don't want to use the word nostalgia but there is a very powerful sense of home where do we come from what is our root which I think is so endemic for all of us who the fuck are we what is what is rooting us in the ground and that's the deeply poetic bit of the book and I suppose we threw that around in rehearsal I mean we played around with all sorts of things with microphones and putting things in different orders and so on The wonderful thing was that having come to know Susan as I've been lucky to do over the past five or six years and having met her in America I was able to call her up more or less and say Mrs Stanton's accent Had you hear that exactly so it's like the batphone to the Godline was there and available to us but thank you Susan Susan was such a supporter and encourager I have to tell you how we met a friend of mine sent me one of Robert's books and in the front she wrote page 253 is particularly fine of course I turned to this page and he's writing about The Darkest Rising saying it's the eeriest book that he's ever met so I wrote him a thank you letter he got to be buddies and so did you know when you met Susan that you were going to try and adapt Darkest Rising what was the motivating force The motivating force was Simon McBurnie, Tim Ballan who brought this wonderful idea in November 2021 and and of course we had to seek Susan's blessing which she gave very readily but I think it was also the circumstances the real circumstances of our lives which was reading having read it to my children as a consequence of Robert's sort of read-a-thon during COVID it suddenly occurred to me I'd really like to read this to more people I just enjoyed reading it so much let's see if I can let's see if we can arrange to do that really quickly oh don't feel weird I translated of it every week for people to do it it was a little more complex than that and so the I think the idea was I suddenly thought well what if we can actually make something out of this it just began with reading really that's where it began and then I rang Rob and he just sort of flew with it and how long did the rehearsal process take that you're describing to us I can't remember we had several goes at it didn't we we had well the whole process took I guess I began textile adaptation in January February of 2022 and and then it sort of went through many versions hugely supported by this great kind of cast of talent in terms of production and editing and then of course sound design at the BBC and at Complicitay and I guess we we eventually handed our homework in around December the 19th it's a noble tradition I think the BBC said well you've got two or three we'll give you two or three weeks to edit you know two or three months later we're still only halfway through and that was partly a sense of enormous responsibility to a book that has meant so much to so many and we I mean I feared the fandom right I mean if you we all know the film that whose name shall not be spoken and and what that did in the crashing and crushing of dreams that it led to and the thought of of anything other than honouring a book that has spoken across five decades to millions of hearts and minds across dozens of countries it was a heavy Ming vase and also of course this whole process of compression because say well surely you know surely we can have 25 minutes no 17 but it works at 2017 but what if it's 17 you just like and eventually going okay I'll cut my thumb off I hope you're happy I hope you're happy take that would it help if I told you that Radio 4 once made me do the Iliad all 24 books in 28 minutes so I guess my question therefore is almost already answered but I do still want to know what was the most difficult part of doing it what was the most fun part but what was the most difficult part I have to say I will answer that but I just hearing Susan talk is so amazing that I just don't want to use up any more of the air time so can I turn that question back on you Susan and say you've listened it must be a strange thing meeting your own characters as strangers as spoken presences hearing the room filled with them and the room filled with readers hearing the world's service it was wonderful okay that's good that's it back away monkey especially after the film because the only good thing that happened after the film was the number of letters that we got from outraged readers but I would like to say that there is one picking up on what you were both talking about and that was the the difficulty of the sign of wood and trying to make that work the complexity of trying to reduce that to say okay we're going to go back in time and then we're going to burn a piece of wood and then it's going to come back again in another time going forward and eventually I think we we took the back door out of it we didn't quite manage to compress it because it's very complex beautiful idea but I think you get a sense of it in another way sometimes we had to say we understand the gesture behind it so we're going to have to find another way to produce that gesture and hope that people will forgive us that was the bit I that was the only bit as I was saying to Jonathan who gave us that wonderful opening to our evening that was the only bit I actively wrote from new as it were was the finding of the wooden sign behind a panel with a row with a row and leaf on it and it works beautiful sorry did we not say before that was the only bit that I felt tremendous temerity about it it was just sort of oh goodness me I am actually rewriting Susan Cooper Rob once upon a time I had to I spent a period of my life writing screenplays and I had to write a screenplay from the darkest rising and I reduced the number of signs Susan this is how we find out you tell us all right total amnesty just two signs or three this does raise another important question though which is would you consider doing a stage version any of you I mean it's a thought isn't it I don't think it would work in the theatre well I think I think but only as a musical so there for opera biggest laugh of the night want to hear that laugh but I think I think there is a a possibility if you were to explore such an idea if you were to start telling the story in other words as a storyteller rather than saying this is a piece of theatre there's a way in which you can because that also is theatre you know I mean I tried to I tried to dramatize it for my children by doing rather ineptly quite often all the voices but the there is that is also a form that I'm very dramatize it where you start literally with what is there and you're not trying to pretend have somebody come in going I'm Will Stanton which is always anyway a nightmare wow I have terrible news for you about what you do during the day um but it's it was an extraordinary experience wasn't it Will to have all of I mean talking of time the whole year plunged into one book I learned so much I learned so much from Susan and I learned so much from Simon Simon brought such drama to he's already a hugely dramatic book in fact one of the gifts of it is that it fell into 12 episodes like an apple that had already been sliced and just tapped it and they came but there are 13 chapters I think which that was the one thing you left us with an extra one to absorb so that was where we had to compress a bit but just watching these two kind of masters of their respective crafts work with story was was an absolute privilege and watching that the transformation, the metamorphosis that happens back and forth between between forms and each each form of art is only achieves itself if it is doing something that another cannot and the novel is that absolutely as we know the question for us was how to how to bring sound to it to change it in a way that the novel isn't which is not to suggest a lack on the part of the novel Dan, one last question before I throw it open to the audience and audience watching on the live stream you can send in your questions and they'll be read out in the room so please do if you'd like to or the three of you really is would there perhaps be radio adaptations of the other books in the series and if not if not why not I've written this Dan and if not why do you hate me is how that question the BBC has plans to do it for television to do all five so whether that would stop us doing it for radio I don't know it's literally your book you can do whatever you like happy to help would you three do another is it time for is it time for the great king I think the great king is absolutely incredible I mean they're all incredible the great king was just very very very we'll see I hope we can get microphones to you I feel like we should be able to manage it but if you have a question and you'd like to raise your hand then a roving microphone will rove in your direction and you can ask questions of anyone on the stage unless it is difficult in which case we might not know the answer so if we could come down to here please that would be lovely I feel bad pointing at you it's a bit accusatory isn't it but yes feel free roving microphones to choose your own person talking of the great king this is addressed to Susan Cooper you've talked about your associations with Cornwall and Buckinghamshire but what was it with Wales because I've one year walked the Cambrian Way which meant going up Caderys and from there down to the coast and it was very evocative of the great king so what was your association with Wales the great king is my part of Wales which is Aberdabi in mid Wales is where my mother's mother was born and where we spent holidays often as children so every inch just as every inch of the dark is rising is the Buckinghamshire that I grew up in so every inch of the great king is that piece of Gwyneth that again that I grew up in so yes you're right and could we sorry I'm not ignoring you people further back I'm just trying to minimise the amount of time that the microphone spends moving around the room but I won't miss you sir you had such an optimistic face then it was crushed like a adorable spaniel well well thanks for that this is another question for Susan why at the end of silver on the tree do all the mortal characters forget everything that they've just experienced over the last four books oh children often write and say that why did they have to forget can you imagine what it could possibly have been like for them to live a normal life knowing what they had been through I don't think so John Nasefield did a terrible thing at the end of one of his books he said the whole thing had been a dream so I didn't do that but I just felt how could Jane and Simon and Barney live as normal people having gone through what they had just gone through don't you think that's right do we have a question up at the top if you can wave when you have a microphone that makes it easier for us to see you from up here so do we have a question up there the mic is already up here we've got one over here awesome thank you this is a question for Susan Natalie referred earlier to the scene in the church in the darkest rising now I was wondering about almost a syncratic approach to religion you take where the old one is quite dismissive of Christianity but at the same time we'll talk about the church as being a sanctuary so I was wondering what influenced that kind of idea of faith and religion I am an agnostic I think the whole thing is a mystery I think any church, any mosque any religious building is a kind of sanctuary because it's blessed if you like by the faith of the people who worship in it for whose faith I have great respect though I don't share it does that answer it? and if we could move the mic down can we get this lady here and then after her we could have this man here another question for Susan thank you so much for these books they're just so fantastic my brother who's in Canada wanted me to ask this question he well we're both big fans of the lost land sequence in silver on the tree and just if you had any comments about how that was sort of conceptualised and how you wrote it because it's quite different from everything else in the books I think it just comes across quite differently I don't know the answer to that question I don't I'm sorry your question is too hard sorry I've warned everyone right to me and I'll think about it Susan you wrote the most extraordinary biography of JP Prisley and I just wondered if you say a bit about where you think your preoccupation of time coincides with his interest in time it's something that links you both as extraordinary writers I think yes it was one of the I met old Prisley well how did I meet him oh I know how I met him his wife Trichetta Hawkes was very active in band the bomb circles and I wrote an op-ed piece in the Sunday Times about her not about her about it and Prisley I got this letter from Prisley saying that was one of the best pieces I've ever read is there anything I can do for you let me know oh that's very nice but there isn't and then I wrote I wrote my first book which was called Mandrake which was a futuristic adult book and got a contract and hadn't a clue I didn't have an agent hadn't a clue whether the contract was any good so I said to the literary editor of a newspaper do you think oh Prisley meant that when he wrote to me and the literary editor said it there's one thing about Prisley it's that he means what he says so I wrote him a note and he invited me to tea and then it became a friendship with the two of them she in fact had influenced me much more than he ever did because she wrote a wonderful book called a land does anybody know that which was phenomenal so the three of us became friends and after I went to live in America I would come and stay with them for a weekend every time I came home he was also rather vain because somebody a publisher in America asked me if I would edit Prisley's collected essays which I did and I wrote to JB and said I know so much about you now from reading all the essays that I could write a book about you I could almost write a book about you and I got this being the days of cables and telegrams I got a telegram from Prisley saying Heinemann offer £500 advance that's how I wrote his biography we did we shared this fascination with time the books have done the UNNE which tried to get into the question of time he was fascinated with it as was I so yes we shared that can we keep the mic over this side so up on this row and then this lady over here please oh we're right in the back sorry you're too stealthy for me and also you're behind a really bright light where did you just point then oh to this man here and then to this lady here who's now dropped her hand meanly so you won't find her yeah he's right here I think it's a he I can't see from here I'm afraid it's a she but that's a him my hair is very short it's okay so I think there are a few of us probably in the room at the moment who work in the world of children's books and publishing and I would love to hear a little bit about your journey through publishing these books and finding your publisher and your relationship with your editor and what that whole journey was like and that process was like because I think we all aspire to at some point publish a book that's still 50 years later is as beloved by children as your books are and have had such an enormous impact on people and on young people and on older people and so I just love to hear a little bit about what that was like finding your publisher finding your editor and creating a relationship that obviously has lasted a very long time and over many books is that me? that's you doesn't care about my books mate we're all here for you I'm surprised you needed me to tell you have you got one editor? and I've got two, one for fiction and one for non-fiction yeah I don't have any at the moment my I had an editor in America who was an enormous influence and an enormous help her name is Margaret McIlderry there is now an imprint which still exists publishing books in her name and she she was at an American publishing house that bought the rights to my first book first book published for children Over See on the Stone and she I've just written a piece about her for an adult book she wrote she was a legendary editor because she really cared about her authors as people and encouraged them and I had written a book which I thought was an adult novel called The Camp which was pure autobiography about growing up in World War II and I sent it to, I said to Margaret I've published this book and nobody wants to publish I mean I've written this book nobody wants to publish can you tell me what's wrong with it and I sent her the manuscript and she said there's nothing wrong with it but it's a children's book and I'm going to publish it so she did it went through it to make it a little more available to kids but it was published as a book called Dawn of Fear and at the same time I was having the idea for The Darkest Rising and the rest of the books and I have these letters how many have we got Kate we've got lots from Margaret saying I said I'm writing this rather weird book it's called The Darkest I told her about the sequence to be called The Darkest Rising she said it's a great title, keep it up and when I sent her The Darkest Rising which was at first called The Gift of Grammary Grammary being the old word for magic Margaret had us change it because she thought children might think it was a book about grammar so it became The Darkest Rising but I sent it very nervously saying this is a strange book and unlike my English publisher who said it's the longest book we've seen this year she didn't care how long it was that sounds stupid today because books are so much longer but she was a huge influence as an editor can be in publishing especially publishing for young people I think does that answer the question? and then here please with your secretly dropped hand stealthily unsurprisingly question for Susan it's not actually about The Darkest Rising it's about Seawood which I also loved really interested in I'm really interested in the idea of the story continuing beyond the final page and the way the reader takes it and spins off with their own imagination and has their own head canon but having said that can I ask in your head canon did Callie and West meet again and remember and finish up together? oh yes great absolutely oh a question from our online viewers if we may we'll get a mic down here to the front thank you sorry I'm making you run miles tonight thank you we have a question from Jess who's 14 years old and she says as a young fantasy writer is there any advice you would give me? keep writing literally I mean don't stop and write for yourself not for any if you're writing if you think you're writing for children don't even think about the other children just write for what just say what you want to say but the basic thing to say to anybody who is writing is don't stop keep it up you're going to have terrible bad days when you think it's no good keep writing while I have the mic I'm just going to ask another one from Jane and she asks what did you read as a child? that's been so hard to answer because I couldn't give you specifics I didn't like Grim and I didn't like Hans Christian Andersen but you said gloomy I mean they literally gave you an award with his name on it I've never got one I was shortlisted for it didn't get it is that why you hate him? I wish I knew the answer but I don't just a lot of folktale myth what the books were that I read I don't know sorry can I just add one thought to that Susan and I were on the today program very briefly this morning and we had a really interesting prep call with an editor who I wanted to credit with helping me realise this she said something really fascinating has happened these books that have grown out of folklore have become their own form of folklore and they are now growing new stories out of themselves and I just thought I don't want to make you feel old Susan I'm old but I thought that was a wonderful sort of organic cycle that had happened and that your stories are now your responses to your work is so fertile, so generative the green the green mouth is speaking leaves out of your work as well this has been happening through the generations don't you think? which is amazing renewal that's true right can we get yes up here and then maybe coming down this R paniel man has not had his chance and we will not leave him don't look at all like a spaniel you had a sort of fallen face briefly like a tragic spaniel he's going to come back to you in a minute stuff at the top not doing a tragic spaniel face I just wondered particularly what Robert just said if you read much children's fiction now and if so what you enjoy is to everybody but particularly to Susan and what you think will still be talked about in 40, 50 years time I'm no judge I'm sorry I don't read enough what do you enjoy mostly because of time so I can't answer the question I'm sorry can you anybody what do your kids like Rob? Susan Cooper very hard to who do you read? I mean I have you know exactly what I read I know what I'm reading Homer like a massive nerd my children love Catherine Randell I mean rightly so that's a good answer this is really wonderful I think golden mole will survive do we think roof toppers any more for any more no okay can we come down the we've got a question here and then question here and then yes lovely thank you good evening this is a question for all of you actually out of the sequence of five books do you have any particular favourites? mine's Greenwich Rob oh I'm just interested in the removal of Greenwich from the oh mine is I think oh I think it's minus Greenwich maybe I like Greenwich mine is Greenwich happy to clear that equation up for you baby well I will only say that the first of all I just want to say how incredible to have Susan Cooper here I just kind of keep doing this sort of wow we're just we're sitting here with Susan Cooper and um yeah what a joy it has been to me I love you too this evening and this afternoon but I will say that The Darkest Rising has been a book of great power to me and if I were ever to adapt another of the books I think it would for me it would be The Grey King I am assuming that's a binding contract quite a lot of witnesses Simon what's yours you're not allowed to choose Darkest Rising because Rob already chose that I forbid it let's all assume that Darkest Rising could well be your favourite but each one took me on a completely different journey but at the I too was taken to my father was an archaeologist and I used to go to the edge of there was a cave called The Little Hoyle on the edge of Pembrokeshire and so the caves in Wales were something very very close to me from my distant past so it actually spoke to me very much that's why The Grey King particularly because it had landrovers in it and my children have fed up because every birthday I say so have you brought me a landrover and they still haven't I used to go I grew up with landrovers yeah there's something absolutely what I think is so extraordinary in Susan's writing is how things turn as well which we haven't necessarily talked about you seem to be comfortable in a moment and then suddenly the whole world is going very strange and you start to get your heart starts to sort of race and there's something recognisable in the way that our individual fears are touched upon or perhaps excited by these stories which is not just to do with fantasy at all but to do with our own shadow selves perhaps and they just seem very urgent and very real and how opening a gate and going in The Grey King and going in and then seeing this dead sheep suddenly that's absolutely that's a very common experience if you have spent any time in Wales or Scotland Wales or Scotland and in remote areas at a certain point you'll come over a little you'll be in a hill and you'll come over the top and you won't be able to see anybody but you will see a dead sheep I live in a city don't tell me this don't ask them until jumpers I try never to write about violence in spite of the dead sheep I write about yeah I would rather write about fear than about violence and which is your favourite or do you not have one asking me which is my favourite book is like saying to a mother which is your favourite child only one of your children is here ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha I think that's the best we're gonna get I'm sorry the most we're gonna get I can't answer it because it's too hard what's your favourite you know what, I thought I knew the answer I would obviously say dark is rising because it's the dark is rising and then also, oh of mine, whatever I don't know, actually I don't know what my favourite of mine is I don't know. Ships cost me more than the others. Pandora fixed me when I was broken. Stone blind felt like a journey I didn't know if I could make but could but did. So I don't know. I can get it down to three. Of yours I think, I don't know. I don't know. Gateway drug book. Dark is Rising book. Incredible, you know, Greenwich book. You know, I don't know what we're supposed to do. Caelion is in Silver on the Tree. Am I supposed to not pick Roman Britain? I can't answer. Your question is horrible. Never ask it again. We have time for one last question ladies and gentlemen. It is your moment. Make it count. Have I put too much pressure on you for this question? I feel like maybe I have. No, here, please. Don't do the face again. I can't bear it. I feel really awful because this isn't actually a question for Susan to finish on. It's a question for Robert and Simon, but I wonder if it might be a question multiple people are wondering. You spoke about the fact that you had to cut down so much wonderful material and that so much material effectively ended up on the cutting room floor and that it felt like cutting your own thumb off. Is there ever be a situation where you would release the full version with all the cutoff effectively and extended cut with all of it combined into one as an audio book or similar? The director's cut. Exactly. Thumb and all. I can see Simon's eyes lighting up here. I don't know. I don't see the eyes lighting up of my producers or my sound designer because you would literally spend a whole day on a minute, on five minutes trying to make it work. What do you mean by trying to make it work? It's trying to find that experience that you have when you read Susan's books where something happens to you. Then you try to find that equivalent thing for you. It became very personal when we were doing it and some of the arguments about what should or shouldn't be there were because we all had such a personal response to it. When we were making it, Susan was just saying as the advice to the 14-year-old writer who's listening now you said so beautifully right for yourself. I think where we got it best was where we made the thing for ourselves. We went this is what I would like to hear. I don't care about you but this is what I want to hear. Then perhaps we touched on the truth of something, I don't know. This sounds true to me. When you came on stage, Simon, you said that this wasn't a nostalgia experience. It wasn't a nostalgia experience and I think that's so true in every sense. I was thinking it when you said it and you've just brought me back to it now that literally I feel sure I've said this to Rob 10,000 times already. Nostalgia means pain for your journey home. I think coming back to Darker Rising for all of us has been the opposite of that. It's a pleasure in our journey home, back to ourselves, back to our childhoods, back to our parents reading books to us when we are children and back to Susan. It has been an absolute privilege, Susan. Thank you so very much. Ladies and gentlemen, thank you.