?I hesitated hugely and I was bolstered by very good friends, one of whom said to me every few months, ?Are you going to tell the truth about your father??? she said.
?I know that I come over as quite angry and in a sense you have to be fuelled by a sort of anger. But I certainly don?t regret it.?
Golding and his wife, Ann, were devoted to one another - to the exclusion of Judy and her brother, David. The title of the memoir is taken from the proverb ?the children of lovers are orphans?.
?Every parent - and this is true of my parents as much as anyone - would like to do the best for their children. But it?s certainly true that their relationship did feel exclusive to me and I think to my brother as well,? she said.
?I just felt my parents looked at each other and found in each other a mirror. They were entwined in some fairytale and we were on the outside. But children normalise those things and get on with it.?
She said of her father, who died in 1993: ?He was an extremely funny man, and I remember as a child lying on the floor and my stomach hurting because I was laughing so much.
?But you saw the other side too and that was his tendency to - there is a phrase for it now - self-medicate with alcohol.?
Despite that, ?the overwhelming thing for me was that I just loved him,? she told the audience. ?And I think, really, when all this other stuff is gone through, the biggest thing for me is writing about him and telling stories about him.
?The benefits [of being Golding?s daughter] far outweighed anything else and one of the benefits was just living with this astonishing man.?
She was joined on stage at the festival by Clare Peake, whose father, Mervyn Peake, was the writer of the Gormenghast trilogy.
When Clare was seven, Peake suffered a breakdown precipitated by terrible reviews of a play into which he had poured his life and soul. He developed Parkinson?s Disease, which went undiagnosed, and spent the remainder of his life in mental institutions.
She has only fond memories of her father, which she recounts in her memoir, Under A Canvas Sky. "I grew up very, very quickly because I was seeing him in absolutely dreadful mental hospitals all over the country. I missed him tremendously.
?But he was always adorable and sweet. As a father he was very good fun and very affectionate. During my childhood, I felt very loved.?
Peake died in 1968 and his daughter?s memoir has been published to mark the centenary of his birth.
Myrna Loy Bela Lugosi Andie MacDowell Shirley MacLaine Madonna
No comments:
Post a Comment