I think this is what happens, if it’s something, I think if you’re going to write, it’s in you, you can’t help it, you have a flair and you’ve got to, you’ve got to use it.

I write stories’ but also an artist, I wanted to draw as well.’ ‘I think from the very start, if anyone asked what I was going to be when I grew up it was, no, it wasn’t, I used to say ‘an author. Knights in armour and witches and all the rest of it.’ ‘In fact, I wrote them then, I still have the books I think, ‘illustrated by the author’, with plenty scenes of carnage as far as I remember, a crimson lake flowing from the bodies. It was ‘the cat sat on the mat’ for some time I suppose but I remember being given, well before I was seven, Arabian Nights and Hans Anderson, of course the Bible, and fairy stories. And I was so jealous that I remember making terrible scenes – I must have been 3 ½ to 4 or something, I can remember this – and I cried and cried and cried until I was included on the lessons. I could read by the time I was about four because my brother was 18 months older than I was, and so my father taught him to read before he went to school. I mean, that was the great amusement, you played games I suppose in the evenings or you read, and I learned to read very very early actually. ‘We were so isolated in a small country village that one just read.

Durham, Old Trimdon, and we lived there until I was seven years old. St Thomas’s was rather a nice church but it was bombed during the war it’s gone completely now. My father was a curate there, in St Thomas’s parish. It is not intended to replace watching the programme in any way: it is lovely to see and hear the author, and to see where she lived: enjoy the video, and read this transcription alongside if you wish. I made this transcript because my memory is not up to the task of remembering what was discussed where in this recording. I loved learning about the inspiration for Airs Above the Ground, for example. She says in this video that The Last Enchantment was intended to be her last book – I am so glad that she carried on writing!ĭisclaimer: I have doubtless misheard and mistyped what was said several times over. The video is chock-full of fascinating details about Mary Stewart’s childhood, values and writing. She is Chair of the Bloody Scotland crime writing festival. Jenny Brown founded and was Director of the Edinburgh International Book Festival (1983-1991), was Head of Literature at the Scottish Arts Council (1996-2002) and has run Jenny Brown Associates, a leading literary agency, since 2002. The interviewer is Jenny Brown for the Scottish Television programme Off the Page. Hopefully the link will remain working but if it fails again then please note that this post contains the transcript I made of the interview.** Here is a lovely video of Mary Stewart being interviewed at her home in 1992. **UPDATE October 2017: I’m delighted to see that the video link works again as it was broken or the video taken down for some months.

Mary stewart ne moves