{"id":626986,"date":"2026-09-25T10:38:14","date_gmt":"2026-09-25T10:38:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/626986\/"},"modified":"2026-09-25T10:38:14","modified_gmt":"2026-09-25T10:38:14","slug":"my-generation-of-novelists-is-dying-rose-tremain-on-70-years-of-writing-and-late-life-inspiration-books","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/626986\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018My generation of novelists is dying\u2019: Rose Tremain on 70 years of writing, and late-life inspiration | Books"},"content":{"rendered":"

My generation of writers is dying. Of\u00a0Granta\u2019s fabled list of 20 Best of Young British Novelists, 1983, six\u00a0are gone, including our most princely satirist, Martin Amis. We\u2019re all approaching birthdays where the cake is too small\u00a0for the candles. Some of us are\u00a0wounded: Salman Rushdie by an attacker\u2019s knife, Julian Barnes lives with blood cancer, others with the fatal hurt of being forgotten.<\/p>\n

But what\u2019s the likely fate of those of\u00a0us who are surviving \u2013 for now? Do\u00a0readers still love us? When Barnes announced that he was signing off\u00a0because of illness, was he also intuiting that the younger generations had heard enough from us old birds and geezers who were young when Sean Connery had dimples, when David Hockney first coloured his hair\u00a0yellow?<\/p>\n

The answer is probably \u201cyes\u201d. But here\u2019s what I believe: contrary to what publishers hope and expect, serious writers don\u2019t think obsessively about readers, or even about sales, royalties and prizes. What we talk to each other about, what we dream of, what we can\u2019t live without is the work itself. When I endured a terrifying procedure for pancreatic cancer in 2019 and contemplated the likelihood of dying in Addenbrooke\u2019s hospital, I\u00a0spent wide-awake nights mourning not only the people I love and the places that are precious to me, but the end of storytelling. Ideas for stories have peopled my life since the age of\u00a012, when I wrote my first play at boarding\u00a0school. My existence devoid of\u00a0these would definitely feel what Amis\u00a0once called \u201cthin\u201d.<\/p>\n

From interviews Hockney gave towards the end of his 88 years, when yellow had turned to white, we gleaned a fine understanding of the elderly artist\u2019s unflagging commitment to a day-by-day engagement with his art. The simplicity of the Hockney philosophy \u2013 \u201cI wake up. And I go to work\u201d \u2013 enabled him to rival Picasso with the vastness and variety of his output. He lived and breathed painting. The idea that he would suddenly stop doing this he would surely have thought plain stupid, and I\u2019m with him on that. Though there can be a\u00a0falling-off in the\u00a0work of artists and writers as\u00a0they age, this is by no means inevitable; the\u00a0reasons for keeping on\u00a0are not too hard to find.<\/p>\n

double quotation markMy latest project brings together both the young playwright that I once was and the elderly novelist I am now<\/p>\n

Certainly I\u2019m getting towards the end of my life, but why should what remains of it be stricken by the loss of\u00a0the one constant that has kept me company for 70 years, since that first little school play? To those who might imagine me in \u201cretirement\u201d tending my garden in Norfolk, existing only through this and through the lives of\u00a0my daughter and my grandchildren, I\u00a0need to explain that ideas for novels\u00a0and stories still arrive in my head all the time, like supplicants at the gate. They beg to be let in. Where would all this clamour go if I shut them out?<\/p>\n

This may be delusional, but I don\u2019t believe the work done in the last third of my life is inferior to that done near its beginning. Critical reaction to my later novels \u2013 The Gustav Sonata<\/a> (2016), Islands of Mercy<\/a> (2020), Lily<\/a> (2021) and Absolutely and Forever<\/a> (2023) \u2013 was very positive and these books were written on the kind of creative high that I never experienced in my early writing days. In contrast, there were a few writers on the Granta 1983 list who had already foreseen a golden road ahead. Amis and McEwan seemed to arrive on the scene as fully fashioned geniuses, nudging literary fame in their 20s. Rushdie, too, had\u00a0by\u00a0then published his Booker sensation, Midnight\u2019s Children, and was clearly a star.<\/p>\n

The rest of us lined up in their wake. I\u2019d published only two books and still felt uncertain that I really understood the form of the novel well enough to\u00a0write anything worth keeping. I\u00a0retreated back to play writing, this\u00a0time for the BBC radio drama department, and was surprised to win an award for one of the best radio plays of 1984 for Temporary Shelter, starring the wonderful late Roy Kinnear (Rory\u2019s Dad) as a naive English tourist facing up to the shortcomings of his life on a\u00a0French campsite.<\/p>\n

Some of Granta\u2019s 20 Best of Young British Novelists, 1983, including Julian Barnes (back, centre), Martin Amis (middle, right) and Rose Tremain (front, centre right). Photograph: Snowdon\/Camera Press<\/p>\n

When, in 1988, I had the idea for my \u201cbreakthrough novel\u201d, Restoration<\/a>, I remember that I drew on one of the themes explored in Temporary Shelter: the protagonist as a shambling man who finds himself in a world he doesn\u2019t understand and who makes a\u00a0spectacular mess of things until he begins to learn the lessons his own nature is ready to teach him. But by\u00a0this time I\u2019d begun to learn lessons of my own about what kind of novel I\u00a0wanted to write.<\/p>\n

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I inclined towards the epic rather than the miniature. History\u2019s great canvas was a constant lure, yet my opinion on historical research is that it\u00a0has to be done thoroughly and then\u00a0almost abandoned, to let the imagination do its essential work. (Kipling described this process as lighting a great fire and then working only with its riddled embers.) Humour had to be part of the storytelling mix and could play a lovely melody above the bass notes of tragedy. Above all, I\u00a0understood that to live with a work of\u00a0fiction for the many months that it takes to complete it, one has to love it quite passionately and be comfortable with all its moods and habits, or \u2013 as Colm T\u00f3ib\u00edn puts it with delicious domestic flair \u2013 one has to stay for long\u00a0periods of time in one\u2019s \u201cmental\u00a0pyjamas\u201d.<\/p>\n

My mental pyjamas are on, then, but is it time to put everything to bed? This may be stubborn, but I don\u2019t feel that it is. My latest project brings together both the young playwright that I once was and the elderly novelist I am now. The new book is titled The Housekeeper<\/a>, and is a reimagining of the inspiration behind Daphne du Maurier\u2019s classic novel Rebecca. It began as a short story in 2014, but I have now brought it to life not only as a novel but also as a screenplay for a film, directed by Richard Eyre and starring Anthony Hopkins and Helena Bonham Carter. I\u2019ve been enthralled by the script work. It takes me back to standing in the wings of the school stage, hearing my own words spoken aloud for the first time.<\/p>\n

The Housekeeper by Rose Tremain is published by Chatto & Windus. To support the Guardian, order your copy at guardianbookshop.com<\/a>. Delivery charges may apply.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"My generation of writers is dying. Of\u00a0Granta\u2019s fabled list of 20 Best of Young British Novelists, 1983, six\u00a0are…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":626987,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[146,85,46],"class_list":["post-626986","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-entertainment","tag-il","tag-israel"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/626986","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=626986"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/626986\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/626987"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=626986"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=626986"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=626986"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}