Three Books – AJ Pearce

Hello and welcome to Three Books with me, Angela Clarke on women's radio station. On today's show, we welcome AJ Pearce. Her debut, Dear Mrs. Bird, is set in 1941 and centres on the cheerful Emmy, who dreams of being a lady war correspondent, but actually ends up working for formidable agony aunt Henrietta Bird, who famously refuses to answer letters that contain any unpleasantness. Aj, thanks for joining us. Thank you. What exactly is unpleasantness for Mrs. Bird? There's a wide range. She was originally a very successful agony aunt in the 1900s when they had. They were extremely straight laced about things. And in Dear Mrs. Bird, she's been brought back to help out in the modern world of World War II. And Dear Mrs. Bird actually started from a chance discovery of a 1939 women's magazine. What was it about that magazine that drew you in? It was a very immediate thing. When I was wasting time online and saw a copy of a weekly women's magazine, bought it and when I opened it, it's such a familiar thing. The women's magazine content hasn't really changed in 80 years. It's clearly a very winning combination of articles, features, advice, fashion, beauty, recipes. It's a very, very familiar format. I'm a huge fan of magazines, have been throughout my entire life, and so I found myself reading something that was very familiar in one way, but of course was in a very different time, a very challenging time. So it was a, almost a window into a world that I thought I knew a fair amount about, but it was from very much a women's perspective and gave a great, a great window into what their lives were, from what they were cooking through to what their problems were. And the problem page was perhaps the most interesting part of it for me. Problems that we could relate to now with relationships or careers or money and other problems that were obviously particularly specific for the war. And very quickly, once I'd begun to collect magazines from that era, I felt I really wanted to write about it. Are there any differences apart from the kind of very period specific stuff? Has anything changed in the women's magazines, do you think? I think superficially huge amounts have changed from that. We probably have more celebrity magazines now, in fact, we certainly do. And we live in a world where we can be more explicit in what people are writing in, about, in terms of their problems. But I think there are still lots of similarities. I was surprised that the wartime magazines were very supportive. It wasn't that cliched, keep calm and carry on. The editorial teams were trying to support and answer people and they played a really important part in terms of morale. So I also think that you have to look at a wide range of magazines because if we just judged 2018 on one magazine only, it would give a very skewed. So you have to look at everything from the mass popular weekly magazines through to the high end fashion. And I also, I'll look at radio listings magazines, magazines about pets, about motorbikes, about cars, to look at the whole sort of cultural spread of the time. Do you have a favourite from then? I think the women's magazines are wonderful. They're such fun to read. I like the adverts because the adverts can be really, really funny. I mean, I was just talking today about perming lotion for babies. Oh, no. Yes. Who'd have thought health and safety. There wasn't any. So really funny. Adam? Well, I think it was the Shirley Temple part. So if your baby didn't look sufficiently like Shirley Temple you could permit until it did, which is quite horrific. But no, the ads are absolutely wonderful. But I like the really obscure magazines too. I have some magazines that are for dog lovers and the very competitive world of showing back then. Do they have perming lotion? I'm not sure if they did then, but they might now though. And what's your favourite magazine now? If you had to pick a magazine, do you know, this could be a sign of age. I'm not sure. But I still love women's magazines and do read them. But I find myself reading gardening magazines more and more in the aim to find the perfect tulip. Is it relaxing? I read interiors magazines because I find them relaxing. Everything just looks so clean and tidy and everything. They all look so perfect, don't they? I rush out and buy stuff that couldn't possibly work in my house. But no, I love magazines. Even though I consume a lot of content online, obviously, as we all do now. There's something lovely about sitting down and reading a magazine and I like to think that that sort of connects us with women who did that in the past. Were they sitting there in an armchair reading a copy of their favorite weekly or were they in a mayor aid shelter or in a bus driving past a bombed out building? It's for a writer. There's so much to think about. That's a lovely idea. I love the idea that something that you've held and read has been held and read by other people throughout history. I think that's such a beautiful idea. Thank you. What's the book, A.J. that you always return to the book. I always Return to. There are lots, I think one of my favourites, that I really love is a book by Angela Thurkle called Cheerfulness Breaks in, which was published in 1940. And Angela Thurkel, who lots of people love, many people perhaps aren't aware of, perhaps she wrote sort of social comedies over a period of, oh, goodness, 20 or 30 years, she wrote many books. But I really enjoy her wartime books because they're light, they're funny and Cheerfulness Breaks in is set just as war breaks out, as you might imagine. And it's a book that not very much really happens, plot wise. But I love the way that her style is. Anything really important, like the war is completely underplayed. It's full of characters going, it'll never happen, it'll be a skirmish, it's fine, all knowing that it was going to happen and it would be anything but a skirmish. And then dramatically, they. She absolutely overplays very small events, somebody making a big fuss about a boyfriend or a very average, normal day. And it's very cleverly done. And all hers are very much a comfort read that I love to return to. Oh, that's really interesting because the period of history that you're looking at in Dear Mrs. Bird is obviously when we were at war and the Le Foi Faure bombing London, and many authors have written about that, but they tend to focus on kind of the horror and the tragedy of the situation. And I think, by contrast, Emmy has a very cheerful outlook. And though there are obviously moments of real kind of gravity and heartbreak in the book, it's also chock full of jokes. Did that book, your book that you always return to, you know, make you want to write about this time in. In such a kind of a warm and humourful way? I think. I think I've been. I'm inspired by books of the 30s and 40s, many written by very witty women. And they're books that are superficially quite light, they're quite often not that long. D.E. stevenson, Winifred Watson, Angela Thurkle, lots of others. And they're books that make you smile, that appear to be quite light. And then every now and then, particularly de Stevenson, a line will come through that will just make you gasp and it will remind you of the seriousness of war. And I very much admire that. I admire people who write novels that are perhaps an accessible, some might say light reading. I always wonder. Light read is sometimes said in quite a critical way and I never really understand that because I think anything that is an accessible read that people can enjoy and pick up on their way to work or read in a very relaxed scenario or just for some escapism. I think that's great, but I am very much influenced by those books that were cheerful, but there's always an undercurrent of being absolutely clear that this time is incredibly grim on occasion. And I hope that's Emmy, the hero of Dear Mrs. Bird. Although she's cheerful and she's positive, as everyone was very much encouraged to be and you had to keep going. She's not light headed about things, things are grim, she's being as brave as she possibly can and she and her community in the book are doing their best to try to have a normal life as young people to to go to the cinema or to fall in love, do all the things that we take for granted, despite the fact that the worst of tragedies could strike at any moment. At any moment. Well, thank you aj. We'll be back for more from AJ after these adverts. Women's radio station will give a voice to your brand. Advertise your product, services or goods on air with a package tailored to suit you. For more information visit womensradiostation.com hi, I'm Michelle Bartlett, the founder of Live Laugh Love Ladies Club. We're looking for ladies to link arms across the globe. This is a new vibrant brand connecting women socially. Our club members enjoy great food, fun and inspiring speakers whilst making friends in a room of all generations. If you're a social butterfly in the community, this fast growing franchise could be for you. If you would like to know more about stepping into our pink shoes then look at the business Opportunity page on our website Live Laugh Love Ladies club. Also@womensradiostation.com at distinctively me we are passionate about making clothes that complement any body shape through our made to measure tailored pieces. 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Contact us on 0207-426-0382 www.acitylawfirm.com hi, I'm Sarah Austin and I'm the founder of the really Helpful Club, an online and offline community that helps supports and connects thousands of women in our personal and business lives. We are buzzing. Join us to share and discover your best ideas. Come to our events to meet other members and learn something. New book now for our London workshop on 10 May helping you prepare for and manage the menopause. Membership is free. Join now by visiting reallyhelpfulclub.com welcome back to Three Books on Women's radio station the programme where we discover the three books that have shaped and influenced today's female writers. Today we're talking to newly Sunday Times best selling debut A.J. pearce, author of the uplifting 1940s romp Dear Mrs. Bird. A.J. letters and letter writing form a significant part of Dear Mrs. Bird's story. Are they important to you? I love letters. I don't get enough. I get bills and junk mail and yes, I think, I think they are, I think they're special and some of my most valued possessions are postcards that, that people sent to me when I was a very little girl because I used to collect them and stick them in a, in a big scrapbook and I don't have the scrapbook but I do have many of the postcards from, from a long time ago and I, I think it's not the same to print off and save an email, is it? I think letters are from the paper you choose to the sort of pen you choose. It's a careful and thoughtful thing. I have quite a few letters from the 40s that I've found in various places and they're a great way to learn the language of how people communicated to each other. So yeah, I think they are special. I love them. Do you, do you write to anybody regularly still? Do you actively let her write? I don't and I probably should. I always. I've started writing more letters when I've been sending proof copies or something, you know, I'm lucky enough to. They give me some free copies of my own book, which is lovely and I've been sending them to some old family friends, friends of my parents and I've written to them and it's really nice to write to someone who you know isn't on social media. I could send an email but it's nicer to put a note in with the book and I found that my handwriting is really ropey when I. It used to be not bad but I don't do. I don't like nice things enough. So I've been enjoying sending letters to people that I haven't perhaps spoken to in 20 years. It's been lovely. Oh, that's lovely, that's wonderful. I often think when I read kind of collections of former famous writers letters, if we will have collections of kind of WhatsApp messages published in the future or things, it's not going to have the same charm, is it? No, I can't even being auctioned off, you know, you see those Agatha Christie auctions where things go for huge amounts of money. But that's such a good. That's such a good point. I think perhaps we should all start furiously writing in the hope that one day we'll be remembered. Mine's just going to be full of emojis. It's going to be really, really unsophisticated. What does that face mean? And why is there a dol or an aubergine? So, aj, this seems like a fitting point to ask one of our second of our three books. What's the book that you wish that you'd written? There are so many. Quite often I will read books and think, oh, I hadn't. I wish I'd written. But then I think, well, I couldn't have. I'm not. I could never be that good. That's amazing. But if we could just put to one side the whole point of talent. So a book that I wish I'd written whilst in the full knowledge that I never could. One would be the Boy in the Striped Pyjamas by John Boyne, which I think is obviously a hugely famous book, but it's an incredible book. It's so powerful and it's so beautifully done and I admire it hugely. It's so difficult to write sort of as a child about a subject as huge as a concentration camp, and the final chapter just stops you in your tracks. And I wouldn't even dare to imagine I could write that, but I admire it just enormously. I think it's perfectly valid, by the way, to answer that question in terms of the book that you wish you could have written if you were, you know, if you were capable, if you have the talent, which I'm sure you would have the talent to do that. But that's how I always think of that question, you know, because that's what I do. If I read something, I'm like, oh, God, I wish I'd written that. Yeah, I felt that the way about. That way about Eleanor Oliphant as well. I read that and just thought, oh, that's wonderful. I wish I'd written that. Yeah, that is a lovely book. Lovely book that's been out this year. Very, very. Another very strong debut, like yourself. Very strong. So, returning to Dear Mrs. Bird, though there are men around in 1940s London, it's kind of a place that's full of women and opportunities for women. Did you consciously want to explore the stories of wartime women as opposed to perhaps the more frequently told stories of soldiers and the front line? That's a question I'm being asked a lot, which I always try and hope I could come up with something clever for that. And the first thing that comes to mind is that as a debut novelist, I didn't have any enormous plan at the start. I just want. I knew I wanted to write about the era and set it in a magazine, but I didn't have enormous thoughts about themes or anything else. And I started writing it and I found it easy to write about friends. And the one thing I was clear on was that I wanted the young women in the book to be their own heroes, that they wouldn't be waiting to be helped out. They do get help by people of all ages, but they wouldn't. There would be. There wouldn't be a knight on a charger coming to sort things out at the end. And as I wrote the book, there are. There are lots of male characters in there. And someone said to me the other day that with the exception of perhaps one that said all the men in your book are lovely. So they are really quite pleased. So are most of the. Well, I suppose some of the female characters are perhaps, arguably less lovely than some. But, yes, no, I suppose so. So I hadn't really thought of that, but I did. As I went through, I liked the idea of the young women, of Emmy and her best mate, Bunty, and their other friends, Kathleen and Joan, and lots of others. Just. It was in their world. The men were away a lot, but they weren't. There was such an expectation for the women at home to rise to the occasion as well and get on with things. And I think that the friendship relationship is such an interesting one because almost everyone I know has a best friend. And I always say, if you've ever had a best friend, this is your book, because it's a relationship where it's not as, perhaps dramatic as complex families, it's not as passionate as a romance. But many of us are best friends, whether they're female, male, any gender. They're with us our whole lives, and we don't. We're not legally bound to them. We're not bound by family ties. We voluntarily stay friends for decades. And I'm meeting lots of people as I'm touring around talking about the book at the moment. And it's absolutely wonderful because as I'm chatting with people after I've been doing a talk or a Q and A, and women in their 80s are coming up and chatting and telling me about their best friends, who they've known forever, and their adventures and what they did, maybe 50, 60 years ago and perhaps what they're still doing together now. I think that's really special and it's a fascinating and fun thing to write about. That's lovely. And then to end on the book that made you think differently about women. Do you know, I've been thinking about this ever since you mentioned it would be one of the questions. And I struggled because I thought changing, you know, how I thought about women. There hasn't been a book that has changed how I thought about women. But the book I wanted to pick is actually a childhood book which I think probably fed into my, the way I was brought up to think of what I could achieve. And that's a book by a children's book by Ruby Ferguson which was published in 1949 and it's the first of her series of pony books. It's Jill's Gymkhana. And I hope that doesn't sound facetious to put a children's book in for this question, but it was a book where, I mean, I was pony mad, but there was no way I'd ever be able to have my own pony. So I read every pony book I could get my hands on. And the Jill series was a sort of a plucky young girl who didn't have much money but she, you know, she did her best and she kind of got muddy and wrote anything that came and was a real get on with it sort of a character. And I think reading lots and lots of books like that where the girls were having adventures and getting to gallop around on ponies, I think in all seriousness, that did really sort of help form a view that I had that if I just tried hard enough and got on with things, then perhaps I could have a pony or anything else that I really wanted. So yeah, if it's okay, I'm going to going to pick Gilles Gymkhana by Ruby Ferguson. That's lovely. Thank you, AJ. Dear Mrs. Bird by AJ Pearce is published by Pan Macmillan and is out in paperback now. And I will stop there and do the outro afterwards so we can release A.J. is that okay? You've been listening to three books on women's Radio Station with me, Angela Clark. If you'd like to listen again or catch up on any of our previous programmes, you can head to the presenters page on womensradiostation.com thanks for listening. Hi, I'm Sarah Austin and I'm the founder of the really Helpful Club, an online and offline community that helps, supports and connects thousands of women in our personal and business lives. We are buzzing. Join us to share and discover your best ideas. Come to our events to meet other members and learn something new. Book now for our London workshop on 10 May helping you prepare for and manage the menopause. Membership is free. Join now by visiting reallyhelpfulclub.com Please also find us on thewomensradiostation.com hi, I'm Ekaterina Brekhova, Head of Conference Production City and Financial Global and I want to tell you about our vote 100 Women in Business Summit at the Royal garden hotel on 17th of April. Opened by her Royal Highness the Countess of Wessex. 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