Carol Drinkwater
our Guest Editor for May
Actress Carol Drinkwater is best known for her role as Helen Herriot in the BBC series All Creatures Great and Small. Also an accomplished novelist, she has achieved bestselling status with her much-loved memoirs, The Olive Farm series. She is currently working with UNESCO on a lavish documentary series inspired by her travel books THE OLIVE ROUTE and THE OLIVE TREE. Author Photo © Michel Noll
Carol Drinkwater on...
House of Splendid Isolation by Edna O'Brien
Educated at an Irish convent, I was a lonely, frustrated girl who dreamed of escape, of becoming an actress. The early works of Edna O’Brien – her Country Girls trilogy – helped me to understand that my passions, my desire to live, to love were not uncommon. Her later works are magnificent. House of Splendid Isolation is my personal favourite.
The House of the Spirits by Isabel Allende
Since discovering this book, I have bought every Allende, but for me this remains her finest. It recounts the horrors of living under Pinochet’s regime in Chile. At the heart is a family’s story. Allende paints a world that is magical, epic, heartrending, harrowing. A masterpiece.
Selected Poems by Ferderico Garcia Lorca
When at drama school, I performed in Lorca’s play, Blood Wedding. I knew nothing then of the Spanish Civil War, had no understanding of Lorca’s attachment to the land, his relationship to the olive tree. When I was writing The Olive Tree, I visited the spot where he was murdered (beneath an olive tree). A memorable pilgrimage. Read his poems, his plays with a parallel translation even if you don’t speak Spanish. His imagery, sensuality provokes and startles. Brilliant.
The Lover by Marguerite Duras
Set in French-occupied Indochina during the 1930s, it recounts an illicit love affair between an adolescent school girl and the suave son of a rich Chinese businessman. Duras claimed it to be autobiographical. Perhaps. No matter it is lyrical, erotic, precocious, evocative. Secreted in a small room, traffic noises creeping through the shutters, this unlikely couple indulge themselves in forbidden love. A slender finally-crafted jewel.
As I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning by Laurie Lee
A young Englishman, ‘still soft at the edges’ sets off with violin from his childhood home and walks to Spain. Rich in idealism, hope, the dreams of the young yet laced with poetic maturity, it is also a tale of Spain in the 1930s and the desperation of its Civil War. Travel writing at his finest.
The Man Who Planted Trees by Jean Giono
When I delivered the manuscript of The Olive Season, I was nervous, questioning the potency of a story that recounted how the planting of trees can overcome loss, grief. That very afternoon, as though in answer to my doubts, I discovered this 46-page masterpiece; a joyous, inspiring hymn to nature, the wondrousness of trees and one man’s humble yet powerful vision.
Return to the Olive Farm is published in paperback on 12 May
© Carol Drinkwater 2011.
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