Jane Austen

In 1804 Jane Austin stayed in a tiny flat over looking the sea at Lyme. She wasn't happy with the choice her mother made, the landlord was slimy and overbearing. The rooms were not particularly clean. She argued over a broken jug. 

Even out of season (she was there in November) she did walk on the Cob, dance at the local Assembly rooms, and enjoy the quaint views of the town tumbling down to the sea. She even unwisely, indulged in some sea bathing.

Persuasion was published after Jane's death in 1818, but who can forget the wry little smile and tip of the hat from a young handsome man that thrilled Jane so much as she walked off the beach? So much so that it made it into her book.

Surfers in the cold waters of Lyme Bay. Unwise I think!

Black Ven and Golden Cap where Mary Anning made her living collecting fossils.

 

Poor Mary has become the latest in a line of extraordinary women who have had their life turned into a film. Not a film about her achievements, not a film about the first female palentologist who paid to learn French, so she could communicate with the top men in the field. Not how she supported her brother after her father died, or how she died of breast cancer at the age of 38. No. It is a fictional story that tells Mary's life as a nanny (she wasn't) and as a lesbian. (She wasn't). It's another fiction to titillate men into watching a history film about a strong woman.

Being a woman is hard enough. All my life I have fought for women's rights and been called frigid, and a lesbian. I am a happily married hetrosexual woman, with one son. I have had a wonderful career in television behind the camera, and now as a writer. Being a hetrosexual woman is not a crime.

Changing history to suit modern life is.

Book Pirating

I'm supposed to be taking a break. Taking part in the real world, enjoying the rough sea as it sweeps over the cob at Lyme. Listening to the cold wind whistle through the trees. 

However, I can't leave my smartphone alone. So I have heard Joanne Harris talking to Travis McCrae on Radio 4 about the way he steals peoples books to make himself a billionaire.

My last book nearly killed me. Literally. Rewrite after rewrite. Honing the words, the dates, researching the personalities of the real people involved in my fictional history book, so that the reader could follow one woman's life from beginning to end.

Publicising the book, bookshop visits, fielding critics and admirers (no, I do not give after dinner talks free), brought me to a point where I have been so ill that I had a mini stroke, nearly went blind, and was so exhausted I couldn't move. 

I did not do this so that Travis McCrae could pirate books and put them on his website for free.  I checked today - I can't find any of mine - but I did find the whole of Winston Graham's life's work. I did find two of Phillippa Gregory's books. 

I met Winston Graham in the 70s at a Charity Function for the late Ralph Bates. He was a kindly old gent.

I have seen Phillippa Gregory in passing when I worked in Oxford. Neither of them deserve to have their work pirated in this way.

I work for the National Trust one day a week, and when I started one of the Guides told me that someone will always try and take something.

It is true, they did.

If you have anything of worth, or beauty, intellectural, or even your own personality, someone will try and steal it. Such is the world we live in today. That in itself is a stressful situation.

What do I do it for ?   Originally, I wanted to make history, specifically women's history, accessible to today's women. Long neglected, and now a trend, one I'm glad to have been part of. 

When I was at Art College, I never realised, as no-one told me, that as stupid as it may seem now, that there were women painters who were the contempories of Caravaggio or Van Dyke.

It is still not there yet.

Travis McCrae should not steal other peoples' copyright. If you see a book on his site from a famous author you can bet they did not put it up there.

By the way, "A Farthing for Oxforde" has been given 5 star reviews and the nicest thing anyone has said about it was "The best thing Margaret has ever written."

On that note back to my "holiday".