dan kieran
I met George at a posh hotel in London when Flashman On The March came out for an interview that was later published in the Idler. He is the one hero of mine I’ve met who turned out to be more impressive in the flesh than the conjured hopes of my imagination.
When we are interviewing someone for the Idler the rule we try to adhere to is not to prepare any questions, the theory being that this way you’ll hopefully get a relaxed conversation instead of an adversarial interview. It was the third time I’d tried to talk to him. He turned me down on the first two occasions, once sending me a very kind hand written letter apologising while thanking me for my interest in his books. So I was very excited when I finally got confirmation of a twenty-minute slot by his PR lady in February 2006. It was a particularly good day, in fact, because I took my son with me in his buggy and my wife Rachel to take photographs. Considering his stature as a writer he could have been forgiven for being rather unimpressed with me for bringing my entire family along with me for the interview - but he seemed delighted to meet Wilf, and spent more time smiling at him as he slept in his pram than he did looking at me. This is the unedited transcript of our conversation so it’s a bit rough, but in its entirety you get a better sense of his sense of humour and all round generous demeanor. He clearly loved children.
GMF: So tell me. is it Jerome's Idler?
D: Well. we’re the third incarnation of Samuel Johnson’s Idler. Jerome K. Jerome edited the second of the three and I think all have had the same purpose. To celebrate the idea of being responsible for your own life, and not being bullied into a job and a life you can’t stand.
GMF: That’s marvellous. I never knew that. I’ll read it with great interest.
D: One of the things I wanted ask you about is the element of truth and authenticity in your books
GMF: Well I try to be historically accurate and I also try to...well, without trying to sound pretentious, I like to entertain, and if I can point to any morals along the way, I'm all for it (laughs)
D: It was wonderful to read Flashman again, it’s like listening to an old friend.
GMF: Well that’s very kind.
D: I read an interview with you where you said that the only thing you share with Flashman is that you both think in the same way,
GMF: That's right,
D: And his perspective that he brings to all these events seems so unique and it's a voice that you don't hear anywhere now, why do you think that is?
GMF: Well political correctness has made people frightened of the truth, there's no doubt about that. There's a great reluctance, for some reason or other, to tell the truth. Now Flashman, however he may have lied in his everyday life, no better than everyone else probably, nevertheless he's absolutely honest about himself. He knows what he is and he thinks he knows what the world is (laughs)
D: But it's so refreshing, and his sense of perspective must have come from you and your experiences
GMF: I suppose so yes. I’m a cynic and I tend to believe the worst. Not always obviously, but I take a very jaundiced view of international affairs and politics. I think the war in Iraq was a war crime. I think it was a shame and a disgrace and I’m horrified that Parliament allowed it. I still can’t get the image out of my mind of Tony Blair in the American Senate trying to convince the world that he’s Churchill.
D: In the Victorian era at they very up front about their motives for going to war
GMF: That’s right. I mean in the introduction to this new book I’ve compared the Abyssinian war, and the straightforward honourable way that Britain went about it, and the dishonourable way that we’ve gone about this one. There’s an awful lot of talk about the Victorian hypocrisy but the Victorians weren’t in the same league! They were clean, upright, non-hypocrites compared with today. I mean people are now talking about the American Empire. It’s not, I don’t suppose, not in the sense that ours was, for one thing ours was efficient and in my view, very beneficial. And I don’t think theirs is going to be.
D: You don’t get many people today supporting the idea of Empire.
GMF: No (laughs). I must make it clear though, I’m not anti-American. I love America but I loath this administration. I mean I like Britain too, but we have an administration, well you do, I don’t.
D: I read that you consider yourself forty years out of date and that’s why living in the Isle of Man is perfect for you.
GMF: It is behind the times I think everyone on the Island will agree with that and they like it that way. It’s much pleasanter. I mean I’ll be delighted to get back. (Laughing)
D: I was going to ask you about that. I shouldn’t have thought that coming to London is much fun for you,
GMF: No I don’t like London, but I have children here so that’s different. Obviously I love seeing them.
D: Is this the nearest you get to hard work in the sense of hard work being something…
GMF: Oh yes, I know what you mean. Writing is not hard work. Although it’s maybe said to be hard work I’ve never found it, but this is drudgery. (Laughing)
D: I’m convinced that you’re an Idler, have you ever given it much thought?
GMF: Well I don’t think that Jerome was an Idler,
D: Our concept of being an Idler is someone who does their own thing and refuses to be dictated too,
GMF: Well that’s about right, that was probably his idea because God knows he wasn’t idle.
D: But it is interesting today because the idea of being an Idler is someone who works for themselves, doing things that you’re interested in,
GMF: Is he the one who said, ‘I love my work and I take it down and dust it from time to time, (laughing) I’m not sure if it was him or someone else
D: There is that famous quote from Jerome ‘I love work, I could sit and look at it for hours’
GMF: Well that’s probably the one (laughing)
D: For us being Idle is about having the time to think and being in control of your own time,
GMF: Well you can’t help having great sympathy with that. I hate that we have such a materialist society and that we’re so debt ridden, that really worries me the way people have just skied into debt.
D: In the paper coming here I read that a credit card company is trying to issue credit cards to homeless people,
GMF: (amazed) I must say I loathe these ads on television, trying to get people to borrow money.
D: Can we talk a little bout the role work has played in your life? Because you spent many years in the army, you worked in the newspaper trade, then you started writing Flashman, which led to a career in Hollywood as a screen writer, was that all an organised plan? How did it happen that way?
GMF: Well I wasn’t going to be good for anything else when I came out of the army in anything except journalism, I went into it and I loved it. As you probably know it’s better than working (laughs) It’s terrific fun. My wife and I were both reporters, and we went to Canada as reporters after we got married. Then we came back and had the family, and then I just kept on going until I decided that I wanted to get out of newspapers.
D: What was it that set you off onto a different path?
GMF: What triggered it?
D: Yeah,
GMF: I was deputy Editor of the Glasgow Herald and they made me acting Editor when the Editor retired. But I understood that I probably wouldn’t be made Editor and indeed I wasn’t. So I went back to being Deputy and I thought, ‘I don’t need twenty years of this!’ (Laughs) You know! And apparently I said to my wife, ‘I’m going to write us out of this,’ and Flashman was the result.
D: You see, you are an Idler! Every Idler has to say to themselves, ‘right, I’m going to go for it now and try and do the thing that I’ve always wanted to do.’
GMF: Yes. I was glad that it happened, and I didn’t expect it to happen, but I thought, ‘now’s the time, now or never’ you know.
D: But the Flashman books have been such a huge success, did that surprise you?
GMF: Yes.
D: Because the other thing is that people are either completely obsessed with your books and read them all or they don’t get them at all, there’s no middle ground. My friend Ben gave me the first one for Christmas one year and by the end of that year I’d read all of them, which was eleven at the time I think.
GMF: Well that is why it had such a difficult time getting published. As you say, you either think it’s terrific or you don’t. For a publisher that’s, I’m quite sure, I’ve never been a publisher thank God, and even when I was a features Editor I had no idea what was going to interest the public, I think that when publishers get something that they recognise they can have a good idea of how it will do. With Flashman they couldn’t. It could either be a great success or it could fall flat on its face. And an awful lot of them said it would fall flat on its face until Herbert Jenkins took it. That was thanks to the efforts of George Greenfield the great Agent.
D: So he always believed in it,
GMF: That’s right, I mean I was ready to give up but the other person who always believed in it was my wife who said, ‘No. Let’s keep going. It’s going to get published.’ And it did.
D: It’s a lovely story in the sense that when you were writing it you had absolutely no idea about how you would sell it, which is really refreshing. These days trying to get a book published is like making an advertising pitch almost.
GMF: Is that right?
D: Yeah. I mean I don’t think Flashman would get published today, which is a terrifying thought.
GMF: You’re dead right. I was terribly lucky in the timing. Twenty years earlier and it wouldn’t have got published. It was far too advanced in some ways, and now? Not in this politically correct day and age.
D: I think one of the reasons it’s so popular today is people’s appetite for history. I was interested to read that one of your heroes was Robert Louis Stevenson, another great Idler I might add. He wrote a fantastic piece called An Apology For Idlers and he contributed to the Idler in the old days,
GMF: Did he really? I never knew that.
D: Yes, it’s a fantastic essay about how if you’re doing nothing and you’re indifferent to the achievements of busy men occupied by careers then doing nothing becomes quite revolutionary.
GMF: I didn’t know that, this would be in Jerome’s time?
D: That’s right, 1892 I think, from memory. Conan Doyle wrote for it as well
GMF: Conan Doyle wrote for the Idler? That’s interesting. I read the other day of a dinner that has been all but forgotten, there is no record of it, where a publisher called Stoddard invited Wilde and Conan Doyle for dinner together. As a result Doyle wrote The Sign of Four and Wilde wrote The Picture of Dorian Gray. And the only thing that Doyle remembered was that they discussed war and Wilde said, ‘It’s getting to the stage where there won’t be armies, two chemists with test tubes will approach the frontline.’
D: No!
GMF: Isn’t that lovely? But Conan Doyle and Oscar Wilde, that would’ve been interesting.
D: That just reminded me of one of my favourite things in Flashman and the Tiger where he’s hiding in the street pretending to be a homeless drunk and Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Watson come across him. That’s one of the greatest delights of your books, the meshing of historical fact with fictional characters.
GMF: Thank you,
D: You must have had a real rush of pleasure when you had the idea to do that.
GMF: Oh yes, and of course Holmes gets it all wrong (laughs)
D: Yes! (Laughs) and Flashman walks off fuming about this insufferable bore, and the cheek of being labelled an American!
So will any more papers come to light?
GMF: Oh I don’t know. Obviously they will never all be opened but I hope there will be one or two yet,
D: You still have the appetite for him? I mean it’s obvious reading the new book how much you enjoy writing him,
GMF: Oh yes, I mean I’m very glad when one is finished, you forget about it but of course and then the bug takes over again.
D: The process of research must be very absorbing.
GMF: Oh yes well that’s great fun, The London Library are marvellous they really are. I’m a country member and they will actually send books, as many as fourteen or fifteen at a time.
D: I have one question from my friend Fin, whose an even bigger fan of yours than I am, and he wanted to know whether Rudi Von Starnberg and Errol from the Complete McAuslane were the same person.
GMF: No. RVS is based on Rupert Hensall, Anthony Hope’s version. No Errol was real and he did become a mercenary. There were people like that and they were out of place after the war. In the movies I worked a lot with Oliver Reed and if Oliver had been born twenty years earlier he would have been one of those, careless, casual, mad as bloody hatters, and bloody good soldiers.
D: So what was working in Hollywood like, because you wrote a Bond Film?
GMF: Octopussy? Well that was great fun. Great fun to do. The great thing about a Bond movie is that you know it’s going to get made. Most films you hope will get made and usually your hope is disappointed. But with Bond it’s organised from the word go, you know it’s going to happen and the best people in the business are involved so that’s great. (To Wilf) How’s he doing?
D: Is he waking up? Honestly he’s the perfect baby
GMF: He’s terrific.
D: He just started laughing, 2 days ago he laughed for the first time and he sat back with his mouth wide open and you could tell he wasn’t sure quite what it was but he was enjoying it…
GMF: It’s amazing because they used to say that babies didn’t smile, but they do
D: We were told it’s just wind,
GMF: It’s not. Our third Grandson, Harry, and God he’s about thirteen or fourteen now, but when he was born, within two or three weeks, there was no question about it, he would grin and it was a lovely sight. So no, it’s not wind.
D: It’s fantastic. The problem is the worrying. You’ll read about something new to worry about and then find a product to buy that will supposedly stop you worrying.
GMF: I don’t think Calpol was around when we had ours. They are the most fun you’ll have in your whole life. And it won’t be long before you discover you’re a grandparent. And that is THE bonus.
D: My Granny says that being a grandparent is the greatest thing on earth.
GMF: Oh it is. It’s marvellous. We’ve got eight of them. And they’re wonderful. Ranging from 10 or eleven to 23.
D: You might have great grandchildren soon then,
GMF: Well, I’m all for it! They’ll just have to get a move on.
(Looking at Wilf)
GMF: What’s his name?
D: Wilfred.
GMF: Wilfred. Lovely. You don’t often hear that now. Is he Wilfrid or Wilfred? Now that must be an old Saxon name.
D: It means ‘peacemaker’ I think.
GMF: Does it? It must be Saxon, because of the sound of it.
D: We liked the idea of a name that’s been heard in the hills of England for generations.
GMF: Well, you chose one. You chose well.
D: So do you have anything on the cards in the near future, apart from perhaps a couple more Flashman books?
GMF: No, getting this lot out of the way. It’s possible that I might have to do another Flashman for radio, because we’ve done two. One of them is actually coming on this week. Joss Ackland does it, and he’s an old mate. He was in the three Musketeers, and he’s smashing.
D: And what about any Flashman Films? I’ve seen the one that was made and I liked it,
GMF: It was all right, people vary, I was disappointed at the time but I’ve grown to have an affection for it. It’s very interesting though, the bit parts, David Jason has one line in it. Bob Hoskins has a lovely little cameo, beautifully done. It was fun. I mean I thought there was too much send up, too much slapstick. But as an adventure story I think it was told in an amusing way. It was looked at as a comedy.
D: It’s very hard to get hold of now.
(We’re informed that my time is nearly up.)
Just before I go is it OK to get you to sign a few books?
GMF: Of course.
D: Would it be too rude to ask you to sign four? It’s just that I brought my first editions…
GMF: (Laughing) of course. I did a signing in Hatchards and there were so many people.
D: And if you’d like a copy of the magazine?
GMF: Thank you,
D: Don’t feel obliged, I mean you might hate it,
GMF: I doubt it.
D: Someone said once that they liked it because you don’t have to agree with everything in it. You don’t have to be one of the gang.
Oh, there was one other thing I wanted to ask you,
GMF: Go on, (while signing)
D: who did the wonderful original Flashman covers?
GMF: Arthur Barbosa. A wonderful man, he was an interior decorator by trade. Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor had a yacht and that was one of his great jobs. He was a great mate of Rex Harrison, they went to art school together. But you see that (pointing at the cover picture of Flashman) is Arthur. He modelled Flashman on himself. I wasn’t terribly pleased (laughing), but he did and I have a photograph somewhere of Flashman at the Charge and the cover had Flashman with a sabre and a Cossacks hat and this is Arthur, with a poker and a tea cosy on his head (laughing). But he was a very fine man and very stylish artist.
There’s never been anyone quite like him.
D: That’s very kind of you.
GMF: (to Rachel) You must have shot 175 pictures.
R: Thank you very much,
GMF: No thank you,
D: I couldn’t have a picture of us together could I?
GMF: Of course! Surely
D: I’m such an unashamed fan.
Thank you so much.
GMF: No, that was good fun, thank you.
(I would put the picture up but sadly a few days before the interview I decided to shave my own head, and consequently I look like a right buerk)
