Anne Cleary
Is there anyone under the age of ten who hasn’t followed the adventures of Bill and Kitty Flashbang, the super-powered twins? Bill can fly, Kitty turns invisible and together they have saved the world from ghosts, dragons, mad robots and alien invaders! A former nurse, prison visitor and founder of the charity Books Behind Bars, Anne Cleary will be talking about the inspiration behind her work and there will be a special children’s session at (appropriately!) St Anne’s School, where young people will be encouraged to develop their writing and drawing skills.
Daniel Hawthorne and Anthony Horowitz
You may have read detective stories, but here’s your chance to meet a real detective. Daniel Hawthorne spent many years working at Scotland Yard in London before he became a private investigator. He works now as a special consultant on many high-level investigations, the most recent of which has been turned into a book (published later this year) by best-selling author Anthony Horowitz, who also wrote the Alex Rider series. The two of them will be interviewed by States member Colin Matheson and there will be plenty of opportunity for questions from audience members with a taste for true crime.
Maïssa Lamar
We are very pleased to welcome Maïssa Lamar from France, where she has won great acclaim as a performance poet. Born and educated in Rouen, she writes and performs in Cauchois, a dialect spoken in the east of Normandy, which has led Le Monde newspaper to describe her as ‘a leading light in the revival of Cauchois culture’. Maïssa is also an associate professor at the University of Caen and has published three collections of poetry. Her performance at the Alderney Summer Festival will be conducted partly in English and partly in French with English subtitles.
So that was it: an unhealthy chef, a blind psychic, a war historian, a children’s author, a French performance poet, Hawthorne and me. Not quite the magnificent seven, I couldn’t help thinking.
There were just three of them waiting for us at the Globe Bar and Kitchen when we finally arrived. George Elkin was presumably at his home in Crabby. Elizabeth Lovell and her husband, Sid, would be crossing by ferry from Jersey. But Marc Bellamy, Anne Cleary and Maïssa Lamar were already sitting round a table, chatting away as if they were old friends. It turned out that they had all come down on the train ahead of us, along with another young woman, Kathryn Harris, who introduced herself as Marc’s assistant.
It’s an incredible thought that there are more than three hundred and fifty literary festivals in the UK. I’ve been to many of them. Appledore, Birmingham, Canterbury, Durham … It wouldn’t be difficult to travel the entire country from north to south, working my way through the alphabet at the same time. I think there’s something wonderful and reassuring about the idea that in the rush of modern life people will still come together and sit for an hour in a theatre, a gymnasium or a giant tent simply out of a love of books and reading. There’s a sort of innocence about it. Everyone is so friendly and I’ve hardly ever met a writer – no matter how big a best-seller – who’s been difficult or stand-offish; on the contrary, many of them have become good friends. Somehow, when I think of literary festivals (even Hay-on-Wye, where this is very rarely the case), the sun is always shining.
But I was uneasy as I sat down with the other guests in Southampton. Our surroundings didn’t help. The Globe was an airport restaurant serving airport food. That was the best and the worst I could say of it. The bright lighting and open-plan configuration, spilling into the terminal, didn’t help. We might just as well have been eating on the runway. Also, I still wasn’t convinced that Alderney was a good idea. With just six weeks’ notice, I hadn’t had time to prepare and I still had no idea how Hawthorne would perform when he was put on a stage. Talking about Alex Rider or Sherlock Holmes was one thing, but having the subject of the book sitting next to me would put me well outside my comfort zone. And it wasn’t just that. As I joined Marc, Anne and Maïssa at the table, I immediately felt that I was an outsider, that I didn’t belong.
I recognised Marc Bellamy from the photograph I had seen of him on the festival website. He was even wearing the same clothes: a bottle-green jacket, an open-neck shirt with a double-sized collar and a pair of half-rim reading glasses on a gold chain around his neck. Like many of the television celebrities I had met, he was actually much smaller than he seemed on the screen and although his teeth were very white and his tan very deep, he didn’t look well. Perhaps that went with his persona. After all, he specialised in unhealthy food, railing against vegans, vegetarians and pescatarians (‘the worst of the lot … there’s something fishy about them’) on his show. Of course, he was only having fun, delivering his jokey insults with an exaggerated Yorkshire accent accompanied by a nudge and a wink. He was overweight – chubby rather than fat. His hair was swept back in waves with a little silver around the ears. His nose was a road map of broken blood vessels. I guessed he was about forty.
‘How do!’ he exclaimed when he saw us. This was actually one of his catchphrases. ‘You must be Anthony and Mr Hawthorne – or is it the other way round! Hawthorne and Mr Anthony.’ He laughed at that. ‘Don’t be shy. Come and sit down. I’m Marc. This is my assistant, Kathryn. That’s Maïssa, with two dots over the i, and I’m talking about her name, not her forehead. And Anne Cleary – rhymes with dreary, but she’s anything but! Scribblers United … that’s what we should call ourselves. You’ve got time for a bite. Plane’s on the runway, but they haven’t finished winding the elastic.’ He laughed again. ‘Anyway, we’ve already ordered. What are you going to have?’
We took our places. Hawthorne asked for a glass of water. I went for a Diet Coke.
‘Horrible stuff! Be a good girl and put in the order, will you?’ These last words were addressed to his assistant. She was in her early twenties, slim and a little awkward, hiding behind a pair of glasses that covered most of her face. She had been staring at her knees, trying not to be noticed, but now she stood up and hurried away. ‘She’s a good girl,’ Marc continued, speaking in a stage whisper, shielding his mouth with the back of his hand. ‘Only just joined me. Loves my show, which is just as well. It means I don’t have to pay her so much!’
There was something quite desperate about the way he talked, as if he was always searching for the next joke just around the corner but was afraid he would never quite reach it. I didn’t quite have Hawthorne’s deductive skills, but I’d have bet good money that he was a lonely man, probably on his own, possibly divorced.
‘Hello, Anthony.’ Anne Cleary greeted me as if she knew me and I felt my heart sink as although I knew who she was, I couldn’t remember having met her.
‘How nice to see you again, Anne,’ I said.
She scowled but without malice. ‘You’ve forgotten me,’ she said, reproachfully. ‘You and I had a long chat at the Walker Books summer party a couple of years ago. That was when they were still having summer parties.’
‘You’re with Walker Books?’ I asked. They published Alex Rider.
‘Not really. I just did a one-off for them. It was a picture book. Hedgehogs Don’t Grow on Trees.’
‘I ate a hedgehog once,’ Marc chipped in. ‘Roasted in clay. It was actually quite nice. Served up by a couple of Gypsies.’
‘I think you mean travellers,’ Anne said.
‘They can travel all they like, love. They’re still gyppos to me!’
Anne turned back to me. ‘We talked about politics … Tony Blair.’