VW: Brian Martin, welcome to the Bookfiends Kingdom we are here to talk about your wonderful book NORTH. Where did you get the idea from?

BM: I think I got the idea from my experience of teaching in a school in a university town, that was the idea for the setting and the subject matter in part. I was pointed to write the book because I had been teaching for 40 years, but I prefer to say that I talked about literature for about 40 years. Teaching literature is a very different thing. But I don't know really because Literature is almost impossible to teach.

But when I finished teaching and education after 40 years, I thought that instead of talking about other's books I would write a novel of myself. I'd also been reviewing a number of contemporary novels for a huge number of periodicals and newspapers such as The Times, The Spectator, The Independent, Sunday Times, Sunday Telegraph and that is not an exhaustive list. For years I was criticizing other peoples novels. Suddenly I found I had the time to write one myself. So I obviously looked back at my past experiences which I think lots of novelists do, and you find a story to tell and that's what I did, and the end result is North.

VW: I think that North is an absolutely amazing book, but it reminds me of the Greek tragedies and the manipulation of North and his charisma did some quite extraordinary things. I have met a person very similar to this!

BM: Similar to North?

VW: Yes not as bad but similar in a lesser way, and it is fascinating to watch them. I can understand why you did it through the narrator of the English Teacher.

BM: Yes people like North certainly do exist at that age you know, on the cusp of adolescence and into adult hood. They can be very dangerous and as I said 40 years I was teaching and very, very occasionally I met somebody who was similar to the character I related and they were very unnerving. Active, full of initiative, can lead adults into lots of trouble and I think the whole of the general public need to see this story. That is why I wrote the story about and around this unusual person, who is highly charismatic, extremely able, and manipulative.

VW: Also with a very high IQ, and also with a very high emotional quotient dare I say? I think that this kind of person is born rather than made via the environment.

BM: Yes that's absolutely right, they find themselves in situations which assist them. Several people have come up to me and claimed that they are the model for North actually

VW: Have you (Laughing)

BM: I have and it's quite amazing! But I've had to tell them it's a nice idea but it's not them I'm afraid. I would have been very hesitant to claim I was one of them.

VW: But North plays one off against another, it doesn't matter if they are male or female, it was just watching. What was so fascinating was not only he watching the people who he was manipulating, but also the English teacher who was watching him - and he would do things to him also.

BM: Indeed that was right (Silent pause) Yes and I suppose I tried to do as well was make the narrator - the un-named narrator almost as interesting and as central as North himself. So that at the end of the novel you end up wondering about North's character and also the narrator's, so that you are left with a certain degree of uncertainty about these two characters and you've got to make up your own mind. I hope it comes across that you can completely trust the narrator because I can't tell if that is the case, because I wrote it! Can you completely trust him, I'm not sure that we have quite heard everything?

VW: I get the feeling by the end of the book that the narrator was much in love with North, but he knew what North was; therefore he didn't partake in all the activities that North did, the psychological activities.

BM: Yes quite and that is certainly part of the intention the reader should end up thinking - was the narrator in love with North or not (Laughter) He was certainly very involved with North or trapped by the Charisma of North. Totally entrapped by him, a very easy relationship between the two of them but whether it became a bond or still a distance relationship.

VW: Do you thing his mother was aware?

BM: Absolutely not. This is another point from my own experience you often find with people like North, parents have got very little idea of what the character is really like with other people and what he does.

VW: But wouldn't he have been very close to his mother because from the person I knew he was very close to his mother.

BM: Well of course North is close to his mother because the father is absent. It's a strange family in a sense but not uncommon. North is close to his mum but nevertheless has aspects of his character and activities he gets up to it's quite obvious that his mother clearly has no knowledge at all. That it is certainly born out in my 40 years of teaching, is many people like North and many others are like North (Laughter)

VW: But in doing your research did you focus on Greek tragedies and the Romans when they were at their height?

BM: Not particularly, but as I've said I've taught and been reading literature for a very long time, all these things are in the back of my mind. They certainly come up to the surface and then settle back again . You are quite right the Greek tragedy and certain other novelists' are certainly there.

The novelists' I admire are Graham Greene, Conrad B James, these are important people in my reading and experience, so they must have some way sort of influenced the way that I write. I know critics who have so far at the last count, likened me to 19 other writers. Giles Gordon, who sadly died a couple of years ago, read the script for North just before he died. He said it reminded him very much in ways of a cross between C P Snow and Iris Murdock (laughter). Well for me there was nothing conscious about reading Snow and Murdoch but these are two novelists' that I've read and admire immensely so somewhere along the line bits have rubbed off, off Snow and Murdoch onto me!

VW: They always say that in your first novel you do just that, write in the style similar to those of your favourite authors, sometimes even have similar ways of saying things.

BM: Yes. I didn't know, certainly in my case I was not conscious of doing that, but commentators have said that there are 19 others including
Alan First, and many others. (Laughter) it is a good amalgam and mixture of people, and stuff just gets chucked together in the cooking pot of my mind.

VW: It's a jolly good read!

BM: I'm glad you enjoyed it.

VW: I have and I've loved seeing all the psychological drama that North created with all the various people. What do you plan to do next?

BM: I am working on not exactly a sequel but a sort of follow up, because people asked what happened to Francine, and the narrator, Bernie and Archie. I am trying to write a sort of follow up that even North's Father who we don't know much about and he's even a more shadowing figure and what about his relationship between Francine and this absent father/husband. That's very interesting?

VW: Do you think North would be similar to his father? Do we actually know North is the son of this father figure that we have been talking about?

BM: Well as you know I talk about his father but not a lot sow we will have to wait and see.

VW and BM: Laughter

VW: Do you find when your thinking about this and writing, is it like a film screen set or just pictures?

BM: Yes I do, as I go on writing, I do visualise it, the settings, places, the details, the restaurants and the town's etc. I think North would become a very good film. (Laughter) But I did find a production company too, and only at the very last moment did they decide to withdraw because they had put money into the History Boys scandal. In the final analysis after much talking they said their major financial backers were not prepared to put money into another school based film. But there was a small proviso that at the moment no, but in the next few years it may do.

VW: All things come to those who wait patiently!!!!

BM: Yes patiently!

VW: The picture at the front reminds me of a Victorian Era and also an Italian era, it's very erm .......

BM: I can tell you where that is a photograph of - actually it's Magdalen College, Oxford, looking out from one quad passageway into the main quad, it's a very good atmospheric photograph, I think. It does conjure up all sorts of ideas because of the shadowy figure and it reflects the novel well.

VW: And you could say that while I've been suggesting that its very similar to ideas in the book to the Greek and Roman tragedies and also the Victorian era they have all got this underground manipulation of the people . But there is .....

BM: Yes , Yes I think that's true you will know that when we come down to the commercial side of books - publishers love genres, because booksellers want to know where to place a novel. Which section it is to be displayed under, Crime, Fiction, Romance, so they can allot the book in just the right spot on the shelves to sell it to its best advantage. So I was asked what genre is this book? And I said well it's really a psychological novel that is not quite what the book seller wants, because they don't have a section so it has to be a crime or fiction book. This is difficult for me because I'm more interested in the may the mind works and the way people behave to one another, than in crime itself - but I think it's found its way into a psychological thriller category so it's in the thriller section!

VW: Given the climate of today do you think the scenario is happening more and more today because we have more freedom ..

BM: Yes, Yes, I think it probably does, certainly the business of adults being manipulated and seduced by young teenagers is nothing new. But, when we read the popular press it's always round the other way, adults seducing the young person, and the assumption is that it's always going to be that way, but when you work with children you can see that there is always a little bit more than that. But to answer your question, I think it's more spoken about now in public than it was a century ago. Before that who knows!

VW: Well it was definitely underground then!

BM: Definitely underground then, but there is a degree of political correction presently and many degrees of this correction that makes us more aware.

VW: But now in all your years of teaching did you find certain authors were your favourites'.

BM: Yes certainly Henry James, Conrad and Graham Greene, these three authors; a book like Greene's The Comedians is important just terrific - Conrad - The Secret Agent a homely and domestic drama. Henry James - his style of writing is pretty tortuous, but when you understand that one character will interpret an incident and then, further on another person will interpret the event completely differently. This is just exactly as it is in real life. If you ask a couple of people - three people what they thought of that traffic accident at the end of the road which happened a couple of hours ago you would get a million different views.

VW: Yes many different views, so if you had to pick a book from him, what would you pick.

BM: Who James? I think I enjoyed the Ambassadors, I think that is my favourite but it is a difficult choice. Then there are many other authors modern and new. I had never read Allen First so just now I'm reading my first ‘First' Book I must say I have got half way through it but I can't seem to see where he's going but I'll reserve judgement. Of course Iris Murdock I think her books are terrific. As well as teaching in schools, I taught in University a fall course with Iris Murdoch's husband, and having met them both, I can see from her books where the ideas come from, Iris and John's domestic circumstances and the food that they dish up, extraordinary. But they are nice novels, but you have to wonder at the integrity of the narrator.

VW: Brian Martin you have given us lots of food for thought. Thank you so much for meeting us and giving us your time.

BM: Thank you for asking me.