Lynne Reid Banks
About Author
LYNNE REID BANKS was born in London in 1929, the only child of a Scottish doctor and an Irish actress.
Her education before World War II included two years in a Catholic convent. When war came, Lynne was evacuated to the Canadian prairies. On her return to London in 1945 she studied for the stage, and after five years in Repertory, spent several years as a freelance journalist and playwright. She joined ITN as the first British woman TV news reporter in 1955, remaining there until 1962. Her first novel, the ground-breaking, post-war, feminist novel, THE L-SHAPED ROOM, was published in 1960, and made into a film the following year.
In 1962 Lynne emigrated to Israel, where she met Liverpool-born sculptor Chaim Stephenson, whom she later married. Altogether she spent nearly nine years living in a kibbutz in Galilee, where their three sons were born. She describes these years as perhaps the most fulfilling of her life, all her previous careers proving useful to her new one as a teacher.
In 1971 she returned to England with her family. For fourteen years they lived in London and Lynne wrote full-time, producing books and plays, short stories and articles. In 1985 Lynne and her husband moved to the country, keeping a small house in London, so as not to be 'out of the swim'.
Lynne says that writing for children comes much more easily than writing for adults:
'It's not that it is less demanding - I just find it much more fun. My mother had a theory that shut up inside of us are all the ages that we have ever been and that they can be 'tapped' for feelings and information. All the child stages in me have been brought out for exercise since I began writing for children. I especially enjoy writing for young children. I used to test out my work on my own sons, though they didn't always give their approval. In the end one has to write what one wants to write, and hope for the best'
Author link
Interview
UPROOTED
HARPERCOLLINS CHILDREN'S BOOKS
SEPTEMBER 2014
UPROOTED by LYNNE REID BANKS (author of Indian in the Cupboard) explores what happens when ten-year-old Lindy is evacuated to live in Canada as World War II begins. There, she adjusts to a new kind of life surrounded by different people, customs and environment. Some of the events are based on the author's own experiences as she was evacuated to Canada aged ten. Lynne Reid-Banks answered the following questions for ReadingZone:
Q: What made you decide to revisit this part of your life now through this account, and how much of it is based on your experiences?
A: That would be telling. I want the book to be read as a novel, much influenced by my own experience. You could ask me, 'Did this incident happen or did you invent it?' but I think it would spoil the read if I broke it up into 'true, partly true, not true'. We did go to Saskatoon, and much of the detail is historically accurate. Other parts I - shall we say? - embellished.
Q: How different is it writing a story based on your experiences from making up a story line from scratch?
A: My previous novels have been pure inventions so of course it helps structure a story if you're hanging it on a framework of historic truth. It's a bit like having a loom where the warp and weft have a basic pattern printed on them and you weave your tapestry around that.
Q: Although you have lived through the time you explore, did you still need to do some research into that time and area?
A: Not really, no. I used my memory and some writings of my mother's, plus a little research into the history of Saskatoon, for example, the population at that time, and whether there was a bookshop near where we lived, etc. I also learned I'd got the riverbank names wrong! - which shows a woeful ignorance of Saskatchewan geography.
Q: What for you as a child were your defining experiences of Canada?
A: In retrospect it was being far away from the dangers of World War II that beset England, but that came later. At the time it was the newness of everything, having to make my place among my contemporaries, living with strangers and never feeling fully at ease in their home (having to be on best-behaviour etc), school being utterly different from my previous convent boarding-school, the extremes of climate... Children of ten readily adjust. This is not a story of hardship.
Q: In what ways, do you think, did going to a different country at that age change you?
A: Leaving Canada to return home in 1945 was a terrible wrench. By that time I was fifteen and in love and I felt like a Canadian. I used to haunt the shipping offices in London, dreaming of sailing back again. I missed my boyfriend and all my school friends. As a matter of absolute fact, coming back to war-torn, austerity England after the 'white-bread plenty' of Canada was far, far more traumatic than going to Canada. That - that shock, that drama, that adjustment, was what changed me if anything did. Cameron in the book feels like a deserter all the time. I only did in retrospect.
Q: What do you feel were the toughest things evacuee children like yourselves experienced?
A: Listen, I had it easy. I had my mother with me, and my much-loved cousin. I had firm ground to stand on in the new place. Kids who were shipped abroad to strangers leaving all their family behind, kids who landed up, even in England in 'safer' locations but especially thousands of miles from home and unable to get back, had a much more difficult time and many of them suffered. You have to distinguish between those who were evacuated without their families and the lucky ones like me.
Q: What was your homecoming like, and for other child evacuees?
A: I found the return, as I've said, far more difficult and traumatic than leaving. I hardly knew my dad. My uncle ('Auntie Bee's' navy husband) had been killed. I found out what had been happening in Europe which marked me permanently. I felt set apart from my pre-war friends who had been through the war in Britain. Shortages, austerity, bomb-sites, all my relatives looking much more than 5 years older... Very difficult. And for my beloved mother, far worse, and I had to watch her adjusting as well as she could.
Q: Have you been back to Canada since?
A: Oh yes, several times, and to a high school reunion fifty years after leaving.
Q: Although you tie up this account in the Postscript, do you plan to revisit Lindy and/or Cameron in a sequel?
A: There are already two prequels about Lindy at seven and nine which I'd like to have published before thinking about a sequel, but writing the above makes me wonder if I couldn't write about my return.
Q: If you could go back in time to have a chat with your ten-year-old self, what advice would you give her?
A: I think I couldn't do better than to give myself the advice Grampy gives her in the book, to give my mother all possible love and support (which to give myself credit, I think I did) and to lay myself open to a great adventure.
Q: You write across all ages - what is it about writing for children that you enjoy?
A: We all have all the ages we've ever been still stored inside us. I like to revisit my younger self and give her (or her equivalent) adventures and experiences she didn't have in real life, or, as in the case of books like 'The Dungeon' and 'The Writing on the Wall' and others, BE other people in other places, classes and times. If reading can provide us with escape, how much more so can writing where you have to completely immerse yourself and make things up.
Q: What do you feel has been your greatest achievement in life?
A: Undoubtedly my books. Having written and had published forty-five books as varied as mine, is, I believe, a not unworthy achievement. But staying married for fifty years isn't bad going either. Of course that's more my husband's achievement than mine, as I am by far the more difficult person to live with!
Q: Despite your successes in writing, would you still rather have been an actor than a writer?
A: Hell, no!
Q: Where do you do your writing?
A: In a small office in our bungalow.
Q: What are you writing now?
A: I'm struggling with a book about two children and a monster, but I'm stuck. I'd like to write the sequel to my book 'The Wrong-Coloured Dragon' (available on Kindle). But I need some encouragement.
Q: Do you plan to work more with your son Omri, with whom you've written a picture book?
A: I've recently had some input into his latest picture story about a boy called Steve who wins his way to fame in his class by planning a very exciting and varied future.
Q: What's your favourite place to relax, or what do you do to relax?
A: Undoubtedly my garden, and gardening and reading are my favourite relaxations. Oh, and zooming about Kew Gardens on a scooter that I don't strictly need but I got fed up with trailing in my husband's wake on foot. That's almost as much fun as scuba diving. (No it's not. Nothing is. But I suppose I'm too old to do that now.)
