Deborah Harkness welcome to Waterstones
Thank you, it's so lovely to be back.
We're here to talk about Time's Convert
which we've got a beautiful, newly-pressed
copy of. Isn't it gorgeous? Beautiful on
the spine, lovely cover.
And it's such a pleasure to be back in
the world of All Souls and a lot of the
characters that people were familiar
with are back in this book, but it
really does belong to Marcus I think,
this story. Why was he the character
that you wanted to go back to?
Marcus was one of those characters who
sort of kept poking at me and that
sounds really funny if you're not a
writer it sounds sort of precious and a
bit twee for a writer to say oh well you
know my characters talk to me. But they
actually, you do actually hear your
characters when you're actively writing
and I started writing a book about
Matthew but Marcus kept sort of, Marcus's
voice kept intruding and I
realized that he really did have
something sort of really interesting and
important to say about fathers and sons
and parenting which I thought is
really the next adventure for our main
characters, Diana and Matthew, so it
was a nice way to get into that whole
story. And it's also a really
interesting way to look at time. I mean
it seems to me that all of your books
are interested in time, I mean this book's
called Time's Convert. Was it
interesting to you in this story to look
at the different ways, particularly for
vampires, that time is experienced?
Because you've got Phoebe with her
experiencing new time as a vampire and
then this long stretch of time that
Marcus has experienced. What I was
struck by and I think one of the reasons
for the emphasis on time in this book
is that I started reading books about
how to raise children. Books that went
all the way back to the Middle Ages. So
what would Matthew have thought was the
right way to raise a child?
How would Marcus have been raised as a
child in the 18th century?
How would Diana and Matthew think about
raising their twins? And I also read
books like What to Expect When You're
Expecting and all those sort of
gestational books. I thought well what
would the gestational cycle for a
vampire be?
And so it was very much about how we
mark the passage of time on human lives.
What are the teen years for a
vampire? And so the more I kept thinking
about that the more it just sort of made
all these different strands of the
stories kind of weave together and stick
together. And you have a real sense as
well I think of how experiences in a
character's past can really linger even
over a really long stretch of time.
You have that for Diana too and there's
definitely echoes there of the
experiences that she's had and the way
what her parents did, believing
that they were keeping her safe.
And I think that's really
interesting the way that you deal with
ideas of safety and how that might
change and whether you're actually
keeping someone safe or you're actually
imprisoning them. They must have been
ideas that were interesting to you.
They were very interesting because one of the
big debates in the 18th century was how
you could raise a virtuous child. And so
I went into the 18th
century literature expecting to hear all
of these stories about how you must be
very stern and actually
there was a whole school of thought in
the 18th century that you know you could
not keep your child from being
thrust into the world and being
challenged, exactly what we're grappling
with today. That you know the best
insurance against the world is the
thorough knowledge of it, is what one
person said. And I just thought this is
so modern and yet it was what they were
what the people in Marcus's own time
would have been thinking. So really
it was a way for me to understand as a
historian that while childhood
changed, while different styles of
child-rearing have come and gone, there's
also a great continuity when it comes to
the big questions which are essentially
how do I raise my child to be safe and
successful in the world? They were asking
that question in the 15th century, they
were asking it in the 18th and they're
certainly asking it today. So it allowed
again to kind of bring all those stories
together. It's fascinating and as a
historian you obviously have a whole
canvass of time to play with here. And
with Marcus's story you're looking at
particularly focusing on the
end of the 18th century and it's a very
kind of revolutionary period. How did you
with a whole world and that whole canvas
to play with you kind of narrow down
where you where you really wanted to explore?
well I always saw in Marcus and Matthew
a kind of father and son story that was
a very Medieval vampire with an
Enlightenment son. Because again I kind
of have this notion that if you were a
vampire you would fundamentally be
shaped by the period in which your human
life was lived. That a certain sort of
hardwiring, if you would, would be sort of
laid down there and that even if you
would have to grow and change and adapt
you'd always have that core that was
medieval for Matthew which I think we
see. And I just thought oh how
interesting for Matthew, this man of
faith, this man who was raised
during a time of patriarchy. How would
that go over if he has a son who was
born in the age of reason and in an age
when people were literally killing the
father in the form of a King. Both in
England, you know both in the colonies with
England and France with the Revolution.
And I just thought that would set up the
most wonderful tension between Matthew
and Marcus that I wanted to explore. So I
knew that back in Discovery of Witches
but I got to sort of flesh it out in
Time's Convert. Yeah, it's fascinating, I
hadn't thought about parallel but now
you say it I can really. see it. I like playing you
probably anybody's read the series knows
that I like playing with the boundaries
between faith and science, faith and
reason, because we so often in our modern
time want to place them as polar
opposites and they're really not.
And they really have never been
and so to sort of soften that and to
question that and problematize it is
something I always love to do. I love the
way that you characterize, particularly
your vampire characters, with this
incredible split between on the one hand
this real sense of control and hierarchy
and these kind of really important rules
that are in place for you know so many
rules about vampire life and then this
kind of potential savagery which
could be completely out of control. I
thought that was really interesting with
Phoebe who is herself as a human
character has been quite a controlled, quite
a measured figure, having to then kind of
experience that change and did that
give you a way to kind of really
highlight those those kind of that kind
of conflict. Absolutely because I think
one of the things we tell ourselves is
that the Middle Ages was quite a bit
more savage and bloodthirsty than we are
today
I'm not absolutely sure that's right, because
in a way you know if you think of a
Shakespeare play in the way that there's
chaos but then there's resolution. Order
was incredibly important to somebody
living in the past even if they had a
little bit of carnival they wanted the
control that came after it. Whereas I
think we're in a weird way much less
sensitive to disorder and chaos and so I
kept thinking about how would this be
different for Phoebe? There would be
maybe different boundaries that would
cross for her than had been for Marcus
or had been for Matthew. And I just love
as a historian thinking that somehow you
know these vampires are the
last of the ancient and medieval people,
who are bringing all of that patriarchy and
tradition and sense of hierarchy into
the present world and being confused by
why we live the way we do now.
I find that fascinating as well. And I think it's
particularly Ysabeau for me who I think
manages to be both kind of real
figure who emblemises the past but is a modern woman in other
ways. Yes with her red mobile thing
She knows all the rules you know so
she and Marthe are these,
Marta's the sort of keeper of the
knowledge of the way things used to be
and so when it comes to sort of well
what's gonna happen with Phoebe you know
it's a big family discussion. What's the
best way? Do we do it the old-fashioned
way and give her all that credibility or
do we do it a more modern way? And as I
was doing some of the edits for the book,
I'd just finished it, was all the Royal
Wedding malarkey, you know, all the big
to-do. And Americans are absolutely
obsessed with the royal family having
having had the revolution you know we
follow it avidly and of
course it was Meghan Markle so there
was this really interesting real-life
example of all these conversations about
well what will it do to have an American
in this family, what will it do to have a
person of color in the family? And I just
thought oh my gosh this is the same
conversations that the Claremont's were
having over Phoebe so it was amazing.
And you get that real sense of layering
I think, that the
past is just, it's just layers all
over each other and that there are these
echoes that come through all the
time. You know we're sitting here with
this amazing skyline of London out the
window where it's you know modern
skyscraper, Houses of Parliament, London Eye.
You know and it is, it's just a
layering. We take the past with us
wherever we go whether we're aware of it
or not. And I have to ask you about
the television series which is very
exciting. It's gonna be starting soon.
What's it been like to see all of
these creations that you had inside your
head have a different existence.
It's absolutely thrilling
and amazing. It's a very humbling
experience. When I first came on to the
set where there were all these people
you know it seemed like hundreds of
people had shown up for Bad Wolf and Sky
to bring my imaginary friends and my
imaginary world to life and the
dedication and the hard work that the
whole team did every single day - I mean
they worked unbelievably long hours 12, 13
hours and every single person was
just doing their utmost to be faithful
to the book to be in the spirit of the
book. It really mattered to them and that
was just such a humbling experience.
Because I sit in my pajamas in my room
and type away you know and and wonder if
anyone is out there you know, tapping on
the glass. And then just to see all
that energy mobilized was just
really thrilling. It must have been.
And your readers really do care so
passionately about the characters and
there are so many more characters in
this that you could explore, I'm thinking
particularly of characters like Gallowglass
for example he seems really, he's a
really interesting character who feels
like maybe there's a lot more of his
story to tell. Do you feel that
there is still more stories to tell
in this world?
I have lots more stories to tell.
And what I want to do always is to tell
them in a way that really makes the
readers feel that same delicious sense
of discovery and anticipation. I don't
want to just give readers more. Sometimes
I say that and the readers say we don't
care, just give us more. But I don't
want to do that, I never want to be the...
you know how sometimes you'll look and
then go there's another one! You know? And
it just seems like just more of the same
thing. So I think as you hopefully could
tell from Time's Convert, I spent a fair
amount of time thinking about how to
make this story more than just more.
The stories have to wait until, like I
know what Gallowglass's story is, so now
I just have to wait until I figure out
how to tell it in such a way that you
get that same thrilling sense of it
fitting into a larger a larger framework,
a larger set of puzzle pieces etc.
That's a very tempting prospect. It's
a wonderful world and it's a
brilliant new story. I thought we could
just end,
I've got a few quickfire questions so if
you don't mind.
This is kind of an either/or scenario so
Sept Tours or the Bishop House? Sept Tours
Time walk or live forever? Oh time walk or...
Oh time walk. Historian, easy. Firedrake or
Witch water? Fire drake. Interesting! Face
Ysabeau in a fight or owe Baldwin a favour?
That's a draw! Possibly face
Ysabeau in a fight because even if I
lost I would learn a lot in the process.
Marthe's cooking or Matthew's wine cellar.
Oh I think it would have to be Matthew's wine cellar.
Really? I'd have to go for Marthe's bread.
Marcus's sports car on Matthew's Land Rover
Marcus's sports car. Nights of
Lazarus or The School of Night. School of
Night. Easy peasy. Spellbound or
blood rage?
Oh I think blood rage. Yeah I think I
would agree. That's a good one.
Last one and possibly the hardest for a
historian: Bodley's library or Matthew's
library? Matthew's library but only so
that I could go and tell Bodley's
library where all their missing books were. Thanks so much.
What a treat, thank you.