[Deseassaugs]

I knew Beryl (now Dame Beryl) back in my London days, and interviewed her for the NYTimes Book Review, though it remains unpublished. I came to her work through Graham Greene's stellar recommendation of The Bottle Factory Outing, and have read all of her works since then (and those that came before).

She had a remarkable relationship with her first English publisher, Duckworth & Co., whose offices were in the Old Piano Factory just around the corner from her house in Camden Town. Back then she would write and publish a book a year, and she was proud of the fact that upon completing her manuscript the book would be in the shops only a few months later--completely contrary to how it was for everyone else (the typical lag-time of 12-18 months was as much in place then as it is now).

She also designed the book jackets for the Duckworth hardbacks, and the original Harriet Said shows a photo of two girls, one slightly older than the other, presumably meant to be the two girls in the book. She showed it to me and asked if I recognized anyone in it. Of course, she was one of the girls, and the other was her brother, his face and hair artfully retouched to make him look more feminine.

The original jacket for her wonderful Injury Time portrays what looks like a ruffian entering a house. The "ruffian" was her publisher, and the house is Beryl's.

The most interesting thing (of many interesting things) she said to me was that she invented nothing--that everything really came out of her life. She even introduced me to what she called her Sweet William baby, who makes an appearance in the last chapter of the novel of the same name. "You see?" she said. "It all happened to me."

This started to change when she wrote Young Adolf, and her subsequent historical novels, all of them excellent (especially her book on the Titanic, Every Man for Himself). Her next book, due out later this year, will focus on the Bobby Kennedy assassination, The Girl in the Polka Dot Dress.