Linda Buckley-Archer talks to Nikki Gamble  about History, Quantum Mechanics and the allure of an eighteenth century villain.

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Can you tell us how you came to be interested in the concept of time?

Well, it’s not a simple question to answer. I came to it, on all sorts of levels. The simplest answer is that I happened to listen to a historian on the radio a talking about 18th Century criminality. She was talking about Covent Garden, and I’d just been there the previous week. I was struck by the thought that two and a half centuries ago you couldn’t walk 50 paces without an attempt on your life. She was talking about the different types or criminals the cutpurses and the plumpers etc. In those days they had lace markets just for lace handkerchiefs. They were so expensive, you could feed your family for a week with the price that a lace handkerchief would fetch. I thought it would be really interesting to bring the 18th Century to life through that lens. However, I didn’t want to write a straight historical novel because I couldn’t have contemporaneous characters saying, “My Goodness, look at that cheese, it’s full of weevils”. Seeing it through the eyes of modern children provided more potential for humour.

I realised that I would have to do time travel. And then, I did start to get interested in the concept of time. I’m not a scientist, but my husband is very interested in Astronomy and Physics so we had lots of interesting conversations, and I read bits and pieces, which really opened my eyes. I suddenly realised the extent to which we are creatures of time. We swim through it in one direction, and yet it’s not quite what it seems. There are so many mysteries. There’s the frequently quoted example that if you were to travel into space at the speed of light for one year, when you returned everybody that you knew would be dead. On a lesser scale, in theory if you keep flying round and round the globe in a jet, you will live longer than somebody who’s stayed on their sofa all their lives. And time will go faster for a person at the top of the Empire State Building than a person down in a mine. And then I read How to build a Time Machine by Paul Davies, an eminent Physics Professor, which really blew my mind. You would have to build a time machine out in space, but it could, in theory, be done. In my books, the anti-gravity machine works through the interaction of gravity and time.

 So these were two aspect of time that interested me: historical time and the nature of time. There was another layer on top of that. When I was studying for a Masters in French Literature, my favourite book was In Search of Time Past by Marcel Proust. There’s an episode where Proust is drinking a cup of herbal tea and he puts a Madeleine biscuit in his mouth, and one taste of it suddenly takes him back to his childhood. This notion of time and memory has also fascinated me.

In The Tar Man the grown-up Peter, has been stuck in 1792 and he finds Kate and his father. To his horror he finds that they’re the same age and that he’s grown old. It dawns on him that they didn’t come back for him; they came back for the little boy. When Peter comes across Kate he notices a can of Coca Cola and can’t resist tasting it. It immediately transports him back to his childhood. I must have been thinking about Proust when I wrote that.

The last thing is my feeling that time, like everything else, is in our care and if we’re not careful, we could destroy it.

Setting the science and history aside, there’s also deal with time on a personal level. You write, “don’t let time be your master, learn to master time”.  I suppose it’s about making the most of your time.

Yes, that’s right. Also, in my fantasy, when you go back in time, or alter time in any way, you can’t permanently alter old history or rather the Universe will split. If you’ve lived, you can’t suddenly not live.

I see it as a tree. If you imagine a shoot which is our world and then if you have a time event it will branch off – it can branch off into infinity. There’s always one growing shoot that thinks it can be changed, and that’s the world that I’m writing about.

You are currently completing a PhD focussing on the process of adaptation of novels to screenplays. Would you find it frustrating to adapt your own novels, which are so rich in detail, to the sparse writing required for a screenplay?

Quite possibly. I think I would find it hard to go through what will probably be over a thousand pages and reduce it. I’ve found it’s very satisfying to really develop the characters, particularly with The Tar Man. Writing a trilogy, you have a big broad canvas to play with but writing a screenplay you have to select what stays what is cut. You have to take account of the financial considerations. It might be impossibly expensive to recreate 1763 and then 1792 France as well. I have a huge cast of characters and the crowd scenes at Tyburn but dramatising for radio wouldn’t be a problem at all.

As you say, The Tar Man is the second book in a trilogy but it doesn’t suffer from the sag that you can often afflict trilogies...

I’m very relieved and delighted to say that people have said they think The Tar Man is even stronger than Gideon. I always had the story arc in my head, so I was always going to notch up the tension, leading to what I hope will be a dramatic conclusion. A couple of people were slightly anxious when I said that Peter was going to be grown-up, so I know that I was taking a risk there. I think it was worth it, because I was able to bring in quite enriching themes, by having him as a grown-up.

 I’m interested in your ideas about characterisation. I love the idea  that you see a person’s true worth when they have to deal with adversity.

That comes straight from scriptwriting theory. If you want to really show a character, you don’t show them sitting down having a cup of tea, you pin them right up against the wall and see what they do.

In the latest book, I have to confess that I was growing to like The Tar Man.

Oh, know. I’m afraid I’ve got a huge soft spot for The Tar Man.

It must be quite different writing about bringing a character from the past to the present than taking modern characters back to the past, as you did with Gideon. Did you notice any differences when you were writing?

 My tutor at Goldsmiths, was the first to read the manuscript in instalments and she was very positive about the really portrayal of The Tar Man in the 21st Century. Although the story takes place in the 21st Century, he’s talking about the 18th Century, so it’s bringing history alive, but in present. The scenes that I liked writing most were the scenes between The Tar Man and Tom. I really warmed to both of them. There’s one scene where the toast pops out of the toaster and they are absolutely petrified. It’s the moment that Anjali  his guide starts to believe that perhaps they are from another century.

The Tar Man doesn’t see the poverty in contemporary London. At one point he says there are no beggars in London. Can you tell us why you decided that he would not recognise the poverty that does still exist in the city today?

I was actually thinking about this the other day. The Tar Man sees London in all its glory and he feels a sense of pride about what London has become. The city is a big character in the book and he feels the excitement, the pulsating energy. He does have one encounter with a young vagrant, begging on one of the bridges. He lifts him up and rotates him and basically tells him to get off his bottom, because that’s how he would feel. But I don’t pay much attention to poverty because in comparison to the 18th Century, when people were dying on the streets from starvation and the average living wage wasn’t actually enough to feed a family, things are easy. An 18th Century villain who’d been hanged and had a really hard life, would find it cushy – and it is his viewpoint.

Your diction changes according to whether you are writing about The Tar Man in the 20th Century, or eighteenth century France, or indeed the present. Do you have any personal rules or system to help you write?

 I don’t set myself any particular rules. However, I do always read a few pages of eighteenth century literature before I write any 18th Century dialogue. I have my favourites on my desk. The one I use most is Oliver Goldsmith, She Stoops to Conquer. That was written around 1760, 1770, so it’s absolutely the right time period. Eighteenth century diction has a rhythm to it that we don’t have anymore.

Yes, when you hear the language you can see, in your mind’s eye, the gesture that accompanies it.

Yes. Absolutely. There’s a sentence, in The Tar Man when Peter just gone to the Vicar’s house, hoping to find his father and Kate, and the Vicar makes some comment about his father being argumentative and he thinks, “Yep, that’s my dad alright.” As soon as he’s said it, he knows that nobody would say that in the 18th century. It amuses him that he can have a memory of the future in the past.

 I wanted to mark the difference sin 18th century and 21st century speak. But on the other hand, if I’d made it totally authentic, I think it would be a bit difficult to read.

You don’t hold back from shocking us in this book. I’m thinking particularly about the scene where you think that The Tar Man has killed the youth.

It was terribly important that you believe that The Tar Man could, and would, do it. If you lose that with The Tar Man, he’s gone. I don’t like black and white characters but on the other hand, if we sympathise too much with the Tar Man, then we lose what is essential to his character. When I read that scene to my children they said, “Oh, mummy, you killed somebody” and they were really horrified. I just ignored them and carried on reading - and then they realised what had happened.

It’s not so much the fact that he’s killed someone but the manner in which he does it.

A business like way, I think?

Yes, that describes it perfectly.

Yes, for The Tar Man killing is like a job. In order to get the information he needs he has to do this. Do you remember the episode in Gideon where he dangles Tom’s mouse over a candle flame because he wants to extract some information? He doesn’t do it because he enjoys it: he’s not a sadist. He’s just very efficient and he’s an impressive man, younger than he appears, probably only about 29 or 30 and he’s extremely strong, athletic and shrewd.

Did writing about 18th Century France enable you to revisit your interest in France and French Literature?

Yes, I love the enlightenment and particularly the faith in knowledge that they had then. It was a period when philosophers turned their back on religious superstition and the absolutism of monarchy came to an end. I’m fascinated by the French Revolution and I do have a soft spot for Voltaire. I dedicated The Tar Man to my close friend Cathy. She lives just outside Toulon, on a mountain called Mont Faron, so that’s where the Marquis de Mont Faron comes in.

The Tar Man has quite a complex narrative and there are a number of strands that you have to keep going. Was that challenging?

Well there was a risk that I might l lose readers, but it was just something that I was prepared to risk. The Tar Man is not as straightforward as Gideon. The first book tells the story of how the children got lost in the 18th Century and it’s principally about whether they will get back again. In this book, the Tar Man has come into the 21st Century and Peter is left behind in the 18th Century, so there are two major stories going on and a subplot about the NASA scientists. Book Three is even more complex and I’m currently working on simplifying it.

Did process of managing that complexity in The Tar Man mean more work at the editing stage to make sure you keep the pace and continuity?

Yes, I think it did. When gave the first draft to Venetia Gosling at Simon & Schuster, she decided, quite rightly, that there was a big bit in the middle that was too slow. So I cut a lot of material and tweaked it. And yes, I had to work hard on the plot too. I had lists and post-its and had to keep a really clear head. In Book Three everything has to come to and end so I was very conscious of building up the pace and tension so that the climax would come at the right place.

Thank you, Linda Buckley-Archer for talking to Write Away.

2007-07-08