Best-selling author of Call the Midwife, Shadows of the Workhouse and Farewell to the East End, Jennifer Worth invites Abena Bailey to her home, in Hemel Hempstead, for coffee.
“I do an awful lot of thinking when I'm out cycling in the countryside. Ideas come to me when I'm miles away,” Jennifer told me as we sat in the cosy living room of her Victorian town house.
At 75 years old she has a love of the outdoors and regards cycling 30 to 40 miles a good day.
“I'm a fairly early riser. In the summer I'm full of beans at 5am but in the winter it's hard to get up by 9am, but whatever time, I'm up to go cycling in the early hours when the light is coming up and there are long shadows on the ground. It's gorgeous. I wouldn't miss it for anything.”
Jennifer estimated that she cycles a good 1,000 miles a year, which is an awful lot of time to think. Her love of it comes from working as a midwife back in east London during the 1950s when her bike was her main form of transport.
“These days I ride a made-to-measure Roberts touring bike because I realised as I'm getting older – I was 70 when I bought it – having a top quality bike is easier to ride.”
As a member of the Cycling Touring Club, Jennifer has peddled the landscapes of France, Holland and plans on taking on the Rhine valley.
She said: “I must admit I am a fair weather cyclist. Sometimes I ride twice to three times a week, then not at all for three weeks if the weather is bad. I'm not going out in wind and rain!”
It was not the first time I had visited Jennifer at her home, in fact it was the fourth time, as my visits have always coinciding with her latest book releases.
In the Midst of Life, which is out now, investigates how social attitudes to death have changed and is told through the stories of people Jennifer has met and studied in her years working as a nurse.
I wanted to find out about her discipline as a writer and how she uses her time to write the memoirs.
She said: “You hear of authors who say that they have a strict regime, but not me, that would bore me to tears.”
At home, looking out into her pretty garden that has neat boarders and a pond is one of her favourite places to get down to work.
The adjoining living room is quiet, there is no television, instead an old Blutner piano, from 1902, which Jennifer found in a Weymouth pub 45 years ago while she was there on holiday.
Her living room used to have a buzz about it when Jennifer taught piano and held musical evenings at her home for family and friends to raise money for St John's Church roof.
In the last 10 years it has got quiet, not only because Jennifer prefers to be alone with her thoughts, but also because she often stays at her flat in Brighton. She also travels to concerts to perform with the English Concert Singers, of which she is a member.
“I have long periods when I'm not writing anything but during that time I'm thinking,” she said.
“Things come into my head when I'm cycling and I feel like I know what I need to do.
“By the time I get down to writing it's usually all done in my head, I can write straight off for hours on end with almost no corrections – apart from The Midst of Life, which required a great deal of change.”
Not one for typing, Jennifer loves the feel of a fountain pen nib on paper and has handwritten all of published works. Her husband Philip enjoys typing them up, which Jennifer says he finds it relaxing.
What is evident in all of the real life stories about the people, who Jennifer met while working as a nurse, midwife, ward sister and night sister, from 1953 to 1972, is that they are extremely vivid.
“I have a very retentive memory,” she explained.
“I don't have to write notes to myself all the time because if I've thought of something, it's there to stay.”
In The Midst of Life by Jennifer Worth is published by Weidenfeld & Nicolson and is available in book stores now.
THIS POST IS AWESOME, EXPECTING THE NEWEST!!!
Posted by: Nike Air Max | 04/27/2011 at 09:02 AM
This is great insight into an author I'd not known (my loss!) until reading the TLS review of "In the Midst of Life." Thanks.
Posted by: Fran Moreland Johns | 06/20/2011 at 06:49 PM