AD: There is a “Sixth Form at Trebizon” but it is still in my head
PN: There are people who actually publish (or re-publish) school stories with short print runs. I’m sure there would be a big demand for a new Anne Digby. Have you ever been contacted by such people?
AD: It is interesting to know that there are people who do this but I have never come across them
PN: I’ve read somewhere that you are supposed to have read only one school story; if that’s true, your knowledge of boarding school is both deep and incisive. Can I ask if you went to a boarding school yourself? And if so, how much of Rebecca and her friends is based on your own experiences?
AD: I never read school stories as a child because they weren’t around (due presumably to paper shortages in the 1940s) but my grandmother once found one in a secondhand bookshop called “The Girl Who Was Expelled”, an Edwardian tome, rather gloomy underones and yet curiously memorable. I am sure the school the heroine went to was nothing like Trebizon, which is basically the fantasy boarding school I would like to have gone to when I was Rebecca Mason’s age, instead of my London day school where you had to say goodbye to all your friends at four o’clock. Our four children grew up in the west country and all of them at one time or another attended boarding schools, either as day pupils or boarders. This helped me to give Trebizon a contemporary feel and suggested some story ideas but much of the time I was back in touch with my own childhood
PN: I noticed that you “continued” Enid Blyton’s “Naughtiest Girl” series. Were you an aficianado of Blyton, or was this a commission?
AD: Curiously, paper shortages again; as a young girl I read only three Enid Blyton books. They were birthday or Christmas presents: “The Children of Cherry Tree Farm”, “The Children of Willow Farm” and “The Secret Mountain”. I loved them and read them many times. Sometime later I remember having to read Noddy to my little brother. I found him very boring but Christopher loved him and would ask to hear the same story over and over again. I missed out on the “Naughtiest Girl” books. So before deciding whether to accept an invitation from Hodder Children’s Books to continue the series, I sat down and read all three books from cover to cover. I felt an immediate rapport with Elizabeth Allen (I was not an unrebellious child myself) and thought the stories timeless, rather than dated. In fact the setting was surprisingly avant-garde. A Co-Ed boarding school which is largely self-governing (the pupils have to learn to take responsibility for their actions at a weekly meeting attended by the entire school, known as “The Meeting” and make many important decisions on a show of hands). It gave great scope, I felt, for further stories. In writing my six “Naughtiest Girl” books, I have kept to the simple narrative style of the original stories, while introducing some new characters and allowing Elizabeth to progress a little further up the school and (very slightly) to mature
PN: Are you still writing, or have you put away your writing materials? If you are still writing, do you use a typewriter or are you now “word processing”?
AD: Yes, I am still writing; sometimes on a typewriter and other times in longhand. I go through two or three drafts and the final version is posted away to be typed. That way I am able to stop fiddling with it interminably which I am sure is what would happen if I worked on a PC
PN: I saw a couple of photos of you on the Internet where you were guest of honour at the North London Collegiate School World Book Day in 2001. Do you get asked to talk to youngsters about your books on a regular basis? I am sure you would probably tell your audience how important books are in an age when they don’t seem quite so important and your own books are both very readable and highly enjoyable
AD: I go to school and library events from time to time; I think it’s important to keep in touch with today’s children. Sadly in schools in some of the deprived areas there are children who literally cannot sit still or stop talking and have an attention span of about two seconds. They often have dark rings under their eyes and admit to playing computer games/watching TV in their bedrooms at night. These children are the victims of a very modern form of parental neglect; they become suddenly calm when a story is read to them. The simpler the story, the better. For example one my “Three R Detectives” books or film storybooks that I have written such as “Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade”. I believe books can enrich the lives of all children but most of all these children who have never discovered them. How to reach out to them is a challenge that publishers are constantly trying to meet but firstly it is the parents, not the children, who need to be convinced!
PN: Bearing in mind the media’s obsession with Harry Potter (and the resurgence of interest in boarding schools) do you feel at all hopeful that school stories could make a comeback in the near future?
AD: I think that it is perfectly possible. The “Naughtiest Girl” stories seem to be doing quite well and I believe there has been a resurgence of interest in Anthony Buckeridge’s “Jennings” books. When a little more time has elapsed it may be that a publisher will want to reissue the Trebizon books and then I would like to add on something about the Sixth Form. I would quite like to see Collectors’ Editions, perhaps with the wonderfully bright covers that Harry Hants did for the Granada editions in the early 1980s, together with Gavin Rowe’s delightful line drawings. I believe Harper Collins now own this artwork
PN: I’m sure I’m not the only “fan” to have beaten a successful path to your door how many fan letters do you get a year?
AD: I get a fair number of letters over the course of a year; I haven’t counted
PN: Are you aware of the enormous clamouring for information about girls’ stories (and especially school stories) on various Internet groups? Does this kind of information ever come your way?
AD: No, I am not aware of this
PN: Cornwall is the setting for Trebizon. I believe you come from Cornwall. Did you choose the name Anne Digby after the Countess of Bristol, by any chance, from the 17th century? Not that Bristol is in Cornwall, of course, though it is “west country. You chose the name Trebizon for the school setting of your most famous series. It sounds Cornish, but a more likely origin for the name is from Marlowe’s Tamburlaine the Great. Was this a conscious thing?
AD: I just made it up. “Tre” is the prefix to many Cornish place names and one only has to think of Zennor, Penzance or Marazion to decide that a “z” and an “n” should be fitted in somewhere! At one time I was a regular visitor to the Children’s Book Fair in Truro (where my grandfather, as a boy, sang in the cathedral choir). There, gratifyingly, the youngsters always pronounced Trebizon correctly as TR’BIZE’N. Everybody else including myself (having long ago given up the losing battle) pronounces it without the stress on the middle syllable
PN: The Trebizon series appears in many recommended reading lists, and no one, as far as I can tell, has anything other than good to say about it. You must be very pleased to have written something that has stood the test of time.
Who is your favourite author in adult and children’s genres?
AD: The publishing climate has always been business-oriented and it was always been difficult to get a first book published. My own experience with “A Horse Called September” (published in 1975) was to have the manuscript rejected by 20 different publishers until eventually a small independent publisher, Dennis Dobson, took the gamble. I think one of the problems now is that, just as many independent booksellers (or grocery stores come to that) have been swallowed up into large conglomerates, in the UK the same has happened to publishers economies of scale etc. This does narrow down the outlets, which has led to the growth (and increased respectability) of self-publishing. I learnt recently that one very large children’s publisher no longer reads unsolicited manuscripts at all but relies on literary agents to go through the “sifting” process. No doubt publishers could fairly argue that their margins have been so tightly squeezed by the abolition of the net book agreement and the huge discounts demanded by some of the bookselling chains that they simply cannot afford to tie up staff in this way. It is probably more important now than it once was for a new writer to try to find a literary agent who thinks they may be able to sell their work. Having said all that, there are many, many more authors being published and more books being sold than there were even when I was trying to get started. Publishers need talented new authors (who might become the bestsellers of tomorroe) as much as they ever did. What is lacking perhaps are the magazine fiction outlets both adult and children’s that were once a training ground where writers could hone and discipline their writing skills before tackling the difficult task of a well structured full length novel. If internet publishing can replace this loss, then that is good news, a very positive development.
PN: In your opinion, is it more difficult to get a book published now than it was say, twenty-five years ago?
AD: I would not say it is more difficult, but it is certainly as difficult.
PN: Thank you for agreeing to this interview, Anne, and for being a part of Gateway Monthly.
AD: A pleasure, Paul
