Allan Ahlberg

Desert Island Discs: Archive 2005-2010

BBC

Personal Journals, Society & Culture

4.4 • 804 Ratings

🗓️ 14 November 2008

⏱️ 34 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Kirsty Young's castaway in Desert Island Discs this week is one of our best-loved children's authors, Allan Ahlberg. He started writing stories for children at his wife Janet's suggestion - she wanted someone to write the words so that she could provide the illustrations. They went on to produce more than three dozen picture books together including The Jolly Postman, Each Peach Pear Plum and Peepo! and their books sold in their millions.

In this moving programme, Allan describes the impact of Janet's diagnosis, how she faced up to the knowledge that she was dying and how, after her death, he worked through his grief by compiling another book - a very personal collection about her life and work.

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

Favourite track: Closing Time by Leonard Cohen Book: Selected Stories by Alice Munro Luxury: A wall to kick a football against.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hi, it's Nicola Cochlin. Young people have been making history for years, but we don't often hear about them. My brand new series on BBC Sounds sets out to put this right. In history's youngest heroes, I'll be revealing the fascinating stories of 12 young people who've played a major role in history and who've helped shape our world. Like Audrey Hepburn, Nelson Mandela, Louis Braille and Lady Jane Grey,
0:24.7	history's youngest heroes with me, Nicola Cochlin.
0:27.8	Listen on BBC Sounds.
0:30.3	Hello, I'm Krista Young, and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Discs Archive.
0:35.3	For rights reasons, we've had to shorten the music.
0:38.4	The program was originally broadcast in 2008.
1:00.9	My castaway this week is the children's author Alan Allberg.
1:06.3	One of our most acclaimed and successful writers, his creations, offer wit, wisdom,
1:12.0	and just enough whimsy to capture young imaginations and the essential truth of childhood.
1:17.3	Pippo, each peach pear plum and the jolly postman are among the many works he produced in collaboration with his late wife, the illustrator Janet Allberg.
1:21.3	He himself has been responsible for more than 140 titles, selling tens of millions around
1:27.3	the world.
1:28.3	It would seem it's his own vivid experience of childhood that has gone some way to enabling him to be the hugely popular writer he has become.
1:37.0	He says, the best and the worst times of my life occurred, I truly believe, before I was 12 years old.
1:43.5	Do you think that's generally the case,
1:45.3	or do you think you had a particularly dramatic childhood? I don't think I had a dramatic childhood,
1:50.6	and I think the quote that you just used comes from a story of mine called My Brother's Ghost.
1:54.8	It does. Of course, that's a character in the book rather than me necessarily.
1:59.5	But you have said the character is very much based on you.
2:02.3	And the thing is, I do find that when I sit down with a pen in my hand and a piece of
2:06.5	me that my own childhood increasingly comes up in front of me and I want to write about
2:11.0	it, the power and drama of things that happened to you, say before 12, registers and goes down
	...

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