Lucy C has written to let us know that there is some precious audio footage of Mary Stewart online! You may remember Lucy from her lovely guest review of Mary Stewart’s essay The Loch or from when she shared with us that it is possible to buy a transcript of Mary Stewart’s appearance on Desert Island Discs – you can read about this in the comments under this post and in the September 2017 bulletin.
The audio Lucy has found is from Last Word, BBC Radio 4’s weekly obituary programme, and this episode originally aired a fortnight after Mary Stewart died in May 2014. The presenter is Matthew Bannister and the parts of the programme that feature Mary Stewart are from 00:24-00:35 and 22:34-26:33 minutes. Neither the source of the audio clips of Mary’s voice, nor when they were recorded, is disclosed. My guess as to when would be around 1990, when her poetry Frost on the Window and Other Poems was published.
Click here to listen to this episode of Last Word.
I imagine that this radio programme may be available for a limited time only, so do listen while you have the chance! I have made a rough and ready transcript as follows:
00:24-00:35
Matthew Bannister (MB): On Last Word this week, the best-selling novelist Mary Stewart.
Mary Stewart (MS): It’s an inner compulsion. If you’re born a writer, you’re a writer and that’s all there is to it – it’s like being born a fish, you can’t come out of the water.
22:34-26:33
MB: Now the best-selling novelist Mary Stewart launched a new genre of fiction, romantic suspense. Her stylish novels sold more than five million copies, and included titles like The Crystal Cave, The Ivy Tree, and The Gabriel Hounds.
Mary was married to Sir Frederick Stewart, a leading geologist and professor at Edinburgh University. The couple divided their time between the Scottish capital and a Victorian house by Loch Awe in the Highlands. She explained how she began her first novel:
MS: My husband is a very keen fisherman and his friend used to call and they used to talk about fish. So one cold January evening in Durham, I decided that I wasn’t going to listen to them talking about fish any more. I went into the other room, with a pencil and a piece of paper, and I started to write a book. It was eventually published as Madam, Will You Talk? and this is how it began:
[MS reads aloud the first paragraph of the book].
MB: Mary was born Mary Rainbow in Sunderland, where her father was a vicar. She was sent to boarding-school at the age of eight, where she was bullied because she was clever. She drew on her childhood sadness when writing her fantasy novel Thornyhold.
MS: I think you could almost say that the unhappy bits of Thornyhold are true and the happy bits are fiction.
[MS goes on to read a paragraph from the first chapter: ‘We lived in a bleak, ugly colliery village… and was ignored’]
As for poetry, it’s awfully difficult to talk about, you know, it’s been so much a part of my life, ever since I was a child. I thought in terms of poetry, I think. All my verses lay, more or less forgotten, for many years, and now that I’m getting old, I looked through them again and it occurred to me that perhaps there were one or two there which it would be a pity to lose.
[MS reads aloud her poem ‘Song’ (p43 in my copy of Frost on the Window and Other Poems)]
MB: Mary Stewart, who has died aged 97.
Lucy wrote of finding this radio programme: ‘there is precious little about Mary Stewart around – it is like discovering ancient treasure’ and I couldn’t agree more. Thank you so much for sharing the treasure with us, Lucy.
As ever, I invite your comments: what did you think of this programme? Were you saddened, as Lucy and I were, by Mary Stewart’s comments about her childhood and Thornyhold? What about the description of Thornyhold as a fantasy novel? And if anyone knows the original source of these Mary Stewart sound clips, please let me know.
I now have the soundfile of the entire episode of ‘Bookshelf’, the BBC Radio 4 programme from which the audio clips are taken. The episode was aired in 1991. You can find out how to obtain your own soundfile in my post Mary Stewart Bulletin, April 2018.
Mary Queen of Plots 
Great fun to hear Mary Stewart. It would be lovely to hear more of the interview, so useful if one could discover when it was done.
Many thanks! I especially enjoyed hearing her read the opening of Madame, Will you Talk? So few authors can read their own works out loud to positive impact.
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Hi Jerri, glad you enjoyed the radio programme, I agree that the book extracts sounded wonderful read by Mary Stewart. It would be good to hear the full interview.
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WONDERFUL – I do hope someone preserves the full interview for posterity. Thank you both
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Thanks! I hope so too, the clips selected are marvellous and I would love to hear the interview/programme that they are taken from in its entirety.
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Thanks for sharing that, Allison. I enjoyed it.
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Thanks, Susan, it is a real treat to hear her voice and thoughts.
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There is something so special about a favorite author reading from her works. It’s interesting to hear the emphasis she puts on certain words and I think it gives added meaning to how the author wanted to build the plot. And, I love the story of how she came to write her first novel. I’ll say a grateful thank you to the “fish stories” since it drove Mary Stewart into the other room to begin writing! Thank you to Lucy C. and to you, Allison, for sharing this and the transcript.
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Hi Linda, I completely agree, it is special to hear novelists and poets read their work – and I think I’d listen with joy to hear MS’s voice read out a shopping list! And yes, thank goodness for never-ending fish stories (and this in turn makes me think of the men’s fishing conversations in the Camasunary Hotel in Wildfire at Midnight…)
It is kind of Lucy C to share her find for us all to enjoy – thanks again to Lucy!
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No problem. So glad to have discovered it online. I also thank the fish for unwittingly spurring Mary Stewart on to a writing career.
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I vividly remember listening to this interview, it was a BBC R4 programme to mark the publication of Frost on the Window in which MS talked quite a lot about her early life. If only I could remember more details!
I was then in my twenties and had read most of her novels to date several times over, especially the Arthurian tales. I stumbled over your website while following an internet trail about something else. Now, I feel a sudden nostalgia for the many hours spent reading the novels as a teenager. It’s time I re-acquainted myself.
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Hello Peg, my blog is inactive at present but I am finally picking up your comment now. I hope you don’t mind that I have slightly edited your two posts into one. I am of course wondering whether you have reacquainted yourself with Mary Stewart’s writing and whether for you it stands the test of time. Thanks for getting in touch.
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I don’t mind at all, and thank you for posting my comment.
I have indeed reacquainted myself with Mary Stewart’s writing. The romantic thrillers still seem so fresh and vivid in terms of atmosphere, settings, and the pacy plots, although I couldn’t really say the same for the social attitudes evinced in her earlier work! In this regard, her writing struck me as quite dated when I first read them in the 1970s. Of course, she lived a long life, in an era of profound social change.
I am currently re-reading the first three Arthurian novels in audiobook form, read by Derek Perkins. If anything, this cycle is even better than I remembered. I read and re-read them many times throughout my teens and twenties, entranced by the profound love of land and the human tragedy. Thirty-five years later certain things stand out a bit more, particularly the acute observations of high politics and individual psychology. They are such richly imaginative and atmospheric novels. Even if she had written nothing else, Mary Stewart would be remembered for these.
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Hello Peg, thanks for sharing these insights. For me, the social attitudes implicit and explicit are mostly fascinating as a window to a different time, and sometimes amusing – for example when our heroines enthuse about the ‘modern’ luxury of synthetic clothing being uncrushable or quick drying.
I have not read the Merlin books in some years now and I am glad to read your praise of them, that they stand the test of time.
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