Alice Thomas Ellis

Desert Island Discs

BBC

Society & Culture, Music Commentary, Music, Personal Journals

4.4 • 13.7K Ratings

🗓️ 29 March 1998

⏱️ 34 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Sue Lawley's castaway this week is the novelist Alice Thomas Ellis.

A devout and traditional Catholic, she didn't begin writing until she was 42. The Sin Eater, that first novel, was her reaction to the changes in the Catholic Church after Vatican Two and channelled her anger at what she saw as the excesses of the 1960s. She's a woman of apparent contradictions. She wanted to be a nun, but fell in love and became a mother of seven instead. She's deeply religious but believes in ghosts and the supernatural and although her books are often triggered by anger, they are frequently tender and full of humour.

[Taken from the original programme material for this archive edition of Desert Island Discs]

Favourite track: Rorate Caeli Desuper by Monks & Choirboys or Downside Abbey Book: Come Hither - An Anthology by Walter de la Mare Luxury: A very comfortable sofa

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello I'm Kirstie Young and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Discs archive.
0:06.0	For rights reasons, we've had to shorten the music.
0:09.1	The program was originally broadcast in 1998 and the presenter was Sue Lolly. My castaway this week is a writer, born in Liverpool and brought up in Wales, she was married for 40 years to a publisher,
0:38.0	became the mother of seven children, and didn't put pen to paper herself until she was 42.
0:43.3	She's made up for it since.
0:45.0	She's now written more than 20 books, mainly novels,
0:47.5	as well as regular journalistic columns,
0:49.9	and is regarded as one of this country's best writers.
0:53.0	Eccentric, fond of a drink and the odd expletive,
0:56.0	she's also a devout and traditional Catholic,
0:58.7	deeply opposed to the liberal movement in her church.
1:01.8	The basic lesson, she says says is to put other people
1:04.4	first. If there's a manky orange and a nice one, you have the manky one. She is
1:09.1	Alice Thomas Ellis. Do you manage to live according to your own lessons then Alice or are you a
1:15.1	secret good orange snaffler? I would take the mankey orange. I wouldn't enjoy it
1:20.8	but I think I'd try and take it. But is that because somebody might see you if you took the good one and think the worse of you?
1:26.0	Is that why?
1:27.0	No, it's because my conscience would give me bother.
1:30.0	But you'd feel guilty?
1:31.0	I feel guilty, yes.
1:32.0	It's not very fashionable though, is it?
1:33.5	Don't you think that people look at you strangely sometimes these days when you do
	...

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