Esther Freud (by Edelstein)

Mark Worden (Standard British accent):

The July issue of Speak Up features an interview with the English novelist Esther Freud. In this out-take we asked her whether the fact that she came from such a famous family had had its advantages, in terms of the media covering her work:

Esther Freud (Standard British accent):

It’s hard to know exactly what it would have been like, but, certainly, people are interested and, in terms of, you know, as a writer, when I was starting out, people are interested to do a profile on you because they can easily write about lots of other people, if you’re a bit dull! But, to be honest, if your book was boring and uninteresting, that would be the end of it, and you’d have one or two profiles and you wouldn’t ever have another one.

We then asked her for her thoughts on the recent statement, by the Scottish author A.L. Kennedy, to the effect that the value of narrative was being lost and that people were reading less:

Esther Freud:

I didn’t agree, my instinct was not to agree, but maybe it’s just the… the people that I know and see, but there’s… to me, there’s absolutely… I don’t know anyone who doesn’t read, however people may feel about book clubs and some people feel sort of slightly snobbish about them. To my mind, it’s the most incredible burgeoning of communication and reading that’s happened in the last 20 years. People seem to read so much and children read so much; the whole incredible evolving of children’s literature, so that children, they’re standing there reading Harry Potter, they’re standing there reading Michael Morpurgo, there… there are films made of books that everyone’s read. To me, it seems as if books are as alive as they could possibly be, but then I don’t know... A.L. Kennedy obviously has a completely different experience, or she wouldn’t say that, I felt it totally from the heart and I think, also, I just don’t want to believe it.

(Esther Freud was talking to Louise Johnson)