Joanna Trollope

Joanna Trollope is a best-selling author who has been writing for over thirty years: first writing a number of historical novels and more recently, her enormously successful contemporary works of fiction, several of which have been televised. The Rector's Wife was her first number one bestseller, and made her into a household name. Joanna recently attended our event with HRH the Duchess of Cornwall, to celebrate National Story Week. In her interview she tells us more about her work and her commitment to improving literacy in the UK.

What made you want to become an author?

I think we all have a particular filter through which we see the world. It could be sport, or dance, or numbers, or pictures, or music - anything really that each of us feels where we are most at home and most able to express ourselves. And for me it was always words, and, when I was still quite small, being of an age to have grown up without television, the power of written stories. I am a firm believer in narrative. I also wanted to communicate with other people, I always have. All of which, I suppose, adds up to becoming a writer.

You have previously said that the greatest influence on your writing has been life itself. What particular events or times have inspired you and what advice would you offer others seeking inspiration?

I don't think any particular or specific event could be held to have been of distinct influence on my writing. What has been much more powerful has been the steady inexorable effect of daily life, dramas and dullness included. Also - very important, all these decades of watching and listening to other people, and to anyone wanting to write fiction, I would say that one of the best things you can do is to train yourself to observe other people with curiosity but without judgement. Humanity is the stuff of fiction, however riveting the storyline, and if the characters aren't credible, a novel will never work.

Much of your work has been adapted for television. Do you think that television and other technology pose a threat to the traditional book?

To my mind, television is a completely different medium to a book, and however well it tells a story, tells it in a totally different way. You are naturally passive when you watch television, but reading a book requires you not just to use your imagination, but also to engage actively with the story and the characters - a much more symbiotic relationship. Personally, I would always rather someone read one of my novels than watched an adaptation - but that doesn't mean I'm not grateful to television for spreading the word!

As a parent, do you feel you had a role in supporting your child’s literacy, and that of your grandchildren? What do you think this is?

Any reasonably educated household can't help but be a support to family literacy. If reading and writing are a given in a family, it is far easier for the children to learn how to do both, as if by osmosis. I certainly read to my children, as I do to my grandchildren, and they were and are used to seeing me surrounded by books. If books are taken for granted in family life, literacy is naturally encouraged quite early as a passport to almost everything worthwhile that follows in life.

You attended our recent event with HRH the Duchess of Cornwall, to celebrate National Story Week. What impact do you feel stories have on our lives?

I am such a fan of stories! Stories are how we make sense of our own lives, how we build friendships and relationships, how we do deals, based on past stories, or take decisions, be they personal or public. Story is the foundation for almost all human activity and connection - and their great charm is that no-one - no-one - can resist “what happened next”!

One in six people struggle with basic literacy; in your opinion, is enough being done to promote and develop literacy skills?

I'm not sure you can do enough. I'm really saddened by the abiding shame that accompanies not being able to read and write properly - and cheered by the real joy that comes with learning to do both. I'm not an educationalist, but literacy does rather seem to me to be the first consideration of primary education, because it is so fundamental to all the other crucial life skills, even numbers. Because illiteracy is still a taboo, there may be an abiding reticence about exposing and rectifying the number of people, especially young ones, in the UK, who suffer from it - but silence only contributes to the shame and the suffering.

On your website you state “I am committed to people”. How, do you feel, better literacy can help the disadvantaged in society?

Literacy means not just that people can learn to drive and shop and travel, but, even more fundamentally, that they can feel that they belong. Being able to read and write well doesn't just make you employable, it makes you able to enjoy and be satisfied by the things you can do with your own brain - and being reconciled to yourself, and who you are, is one of the first and biggest steps to confidence and a sense of self-worth.

There is a lot in the news about library cuts at the moment. What do you think the future for libraries is?

Libraries have changed from the silent forbidding places of my childhood, and will, and must, change again to accommodate new technologies and ways of learning and enriching the imagination. But it is ignorant and uncivilised to think we can do without them. They provide a structure and an encouraging environment for the acquisition of knowledge, without which we will never progress and never be happy or satisfied. They are also nicely democratic - open to anyone, of all ages, and I am fervently hoping that the current ructions will end with a re-think, not these anti-progressive closures.