Jo Ward

It can’t be literature week without Christopher Lloyd, the fabulous author and co-founder of children’s non-fiction publisher what on earth books, making an appearance. Yes, he’s coming back to captivate audiences, young and old, with his exuberant storytelling, fascinating facts and to talk about two of his best selling publications and another exciting book about to be launched.  

On Friday 12th November at the John Mackintosh Hall Theatre Christopher will be hosting a school’s day dedicated to his new book on climate change entitled It’s Up to Us.

‘I am thrilled to be returning to Gibraltar – where I have made so many friends over the years. It’s also great timing with the launch of It’s Up To Us – A Children’s Terra Carta for Nature, People and Planet. It is a huge honour to have worked on this book in conjunction with HRH The Prince of Wales, who has written the foreword, and his charity, The Princes Foundation. I can’t wait to show the school children in Gibraltar how we worked with 33 artists from all over the world to tell the story of climate change and what we can do to help make the planet fit for the future!” 

Christopher explains how the idea for the book came about. “It was with great interest that in January this year I read about HRH The Prince of Wales’ announcement of Terra Carta – a new treaty for business leaders that includes a series of pledges to put the planet first. The Terra Carta is part of HRH’s Sustainable Markets Initiative, and has more than 400 corporations already committed. 

But are middle-aged business executives really the most important audience when it comes to mitigating the long-term impact of climate change? I found myself reaching back to the Magna Carta Chronicle. What if we could make these brilliant pledges accessible to a much wider audience – 6-106 as well as their siblings, parents, grandparents, teachers, uncles and aunts?”

“The magic of children’s picture books is that, if done skilfully, they can convey really complex topics in ways that are accessible to young minds. If read outload with adults, they can impact them, too,” Christopher says.

It’s Up to Us will be launched alongside the 2021 United Nations Climate Change Conference, COP26, taking place from October 31 until November 12. A copy of the book will be donated to every primary school in Scotland and half of all proceeds from sales will go to The Prince’s Foundation to support its charitable work.

The beautifully illustrated book features artists from all over the world – ranging from Siberia to Kenya and Vietnam to Aboriginal Australia. “As it turned out, the approach could not have been more in keeping with the Terra Carta concept of everyone being in this climate change conundrum together, regardless of background, wealth, ethnicity or geography,” he says. 

Christopher states that it was of the utmost importance that the book was sustainably produced: “It was printed in the UK with vegetable inks on revival paper in a way that also enabled measurement of the carbon emissions from the materials used.”

“We have a certificate from the World Land Trust to show that the carbon footprint was 280 grams per book, an impact that has now been offset, but more interestingly on the back of the book we show that 280 grams is the equivalent to producing five apples, a third of a glass of milk or a fifth of a plastic toothbrush,” explains Christopher. 

The experience of publishing It’s Up to Us has prompted Christopher to consider how What On Earth Publishing itself might work to meet the Terra Carta pledges that also appear in the back of the book in their original form. “I’m thinking hard about every aspect of our business. Not just what books we do and what we print on and where the books are printed, but also how we can work as an organisation in a way that will minimise the impact we have, while also maximising demand from consumers.”

On Saturday 13th November Christopher Lloyd will be hosting two other events in the Lower Exhibition Room. 

In the morning, Christopher will be taking the audience on a thrilling ride through 13.8 billion years in the history of Absolutely Everything! Using 15 everyday objects, he will combine the story of nature, the stone ages, ancient and human history in a series of themes that help makes sense of us all – human and nonhuman, past, present and future!

“I wanted to find a book that would help connect everything together from nature and ancient history to science and religions, but nothing suitable seemed to exist, so I decided I’d write that book and the result is Absolutely Everything!”

The book, for age 9 years old and over, is subtitled A History of Earth, Dinosaurs, Rulers, Robots and Other Things too Numerous to Mention, and it aims to answer as much as it possibly can about the history of the universe from the Big Bang right up to the  21st-century population explosion – and all in only 337 pages.

Join Christopher in the afternoon as he becomes a dynamic quiz show host in a contest to discover who will be crowned Gibraltar Literary Week Britannica Brainbox! Compete through eight quiz rounds, one for each chapter of the Britannica All New Children’s Encyclopaedia and witness a battle of brains in a grand finale to reveal the prize winner – it could be you! Ideal for all ages 8- 108. Please bring an internet-connected smartphone or tablet to compete in a family team or as an individual.

“I shall also relish the chance of hosting a live version my Britannica Quiz Show which I have only been able to share on Zoom with schools until now. Who will be the Gibraltar Britannica Quiz Champion? It could be you – as long as you come along on Saturday 2pm in the John Mackintosh Theatre!”

Clive Beltran has had a distinguished career in politics and education in Gibraltar and now the former Education Minister and Mayor will be taking part in ‘An Audience With…’ as part of Literature Week when he will be talking about his book celebrating local customs, practices and sayings: ‘Yodo Morao and all that…’.

For those of us that don’t know what the title refers to, Clive tells me that it has become a part of local jargon for Gentian Violet, an antiseptic dye that was used to put on cuts and grazes. “In my younger days, children were always out and about in the streets and if we fell down it was Yodo Morao that was reached for to disinfect out wounds,” he explains. 

Clive was prompted to write the book from a combination of nostalgia and the wish to pass on to his children and grandchildren some of the thoughts and emotions that he treasured from his childhood and adolescence. “The idea was born during my stay at Calpe House some eight years ago when I had to spend about six months there,” he says. “It was a time of quiet reflection and introspection and that Christmas we had a wonderful festive season in the English tradition at my son-in-law’s family house in Suffolk.” Clive goes on to say that it was very different to the Christmases that he remembers as a child and he began to think about the Spanish Christmas carols that they used to sing back home. “I’m 72 now,” he comments, “and I decided that as soon as I felt up to it I would write those carols down and produce a booklet that I thought my grandchildren should know about and to show them what Grandad’s Christmases were like.”

“From the Christmas carols booklet, I carried on thinking and reminiscing about life in Gibraltar in the 1950s and 60s and they just remained as ideas because for quite a long time my treatment precluded me from pursuing and developing them, but gradually I gained strength and I began to make a list of traditions, practices, sayings and objects that I remembered.”  Those vague snapshots of times gone by turned into a list that kept on growing and before he knew it, Clive had over one hundred bits of information which he then developed into the book.

“Unless we write down what is known as folklore, meaning oral traditional customs, practices, songs, proverbs and riddles, they will only remain in the collective memory of people of my generation,” Clive states. “They will either die with us or, if you pass them on by word of mouth, they run the risk of being transformed and distorted by all sorts of social influences and they will eventually die out.” 

“Our culture is very much a combination of many other different cultures,” Clive remarks. “For instance, dance is a very popular part of our culture in Gibraltar, but there is no one particular dance but more a combination of influences ranging from the South American Tango to Spanish and English dances.” 

“We do have a patriotic song about Gibraltar which people often sing at National Day and that is Llévame Donde Nací (Take Me Back To Where I Was Born) attributed to Gibraltarian guitarist and composer Pepe Roman.”

The book includes photos looking back at social life on the Rock in the 50s and 60s and if there is one thing that comes to Clive’s mind from those days it is how everybody used to go about their business at a much more leisurely pace than nowadays. “Children played outside because their homes were too small and overcrowded,” he says. “The vast majority of houses were tenement flats and you would have families of four or five people living in a one room with a kitchen and a shared outside communal patio area.”

“Something that I strongly remember are families sitting together for lunch and dinner every day. As soon as Dad came home from work, Mum would shout out of the window and children were called up from wherever they were playing to wash their hands – that was almost a religion.”

‘Yodo Morao and all that…’ is available to purchase from John Mackintosh Hall reception and at City Hall. It has proved to be extremely popular, prompting a re-print, with all proceeds from sales of the book being donated to the Friends of Calpe House Charity. In October Clive Beltran presented the charity with a cheque for six thousand pounds. 

His own life story could come straight from one of his books – the rise, then fall, then rise again of the boy from Weston-super-Mare who became a politician and was then made a life peer but who has also spent some time during his life in prison for perjury and perverting the course of justice. “I didn’t start writing until I was thirty-five,” he states. “At school I was a raconteur, I enjoyed acting, the stage and words.” 

Calling himself a storyteller, not a writer, Lord Archer comments that anyone who is well educated and well-read can be a writer, but that storytelling is a God given gift. 

The road to becoming one of the world’s most popular authors wasn’t a smooth one. Jeffrey Archer says that it wasn’t until he got himself into terrible financial problems and had to stand down as an MP in 1974 that led him to write his first book, Not a Penny More, Not a Penny Less, thinking that it would become an instant best seller and solve his financial problems. “It was turned down by sixteen publishers and the seventeenth publisher sold only 3,000 copies in the first year, so if you want to get out of debt, don’t write a book.”

“The breakthrough came with my third book, Kane and Abel, which sold a million copies in the first week,” Lord Archer tells me. Since then he has gone on to sell over 275 million books in 97 countries in more than 37 languages. 

As any successful novelist, Jeffrey Archer has a disciplined writing process. “I arise in the morning at 5.30 am, working from 6-8 am, then I have breakfast and take a two hour break before writing again from 10-12, then I have another two hour break when I may go for a walk, then lunch, then back to writing from 2-4, then I will have a break before my final session from 6-8 pm and I’m in bed around 9.30,” he explains. “I always write the first draft in longhand and that will take roughly 34/35 days, 300 hours, and then I take a much longer break and go back for the next draft.”

Where does he get his inspiration from when starting a new book and how does he sustain an interest in his characters? “I wish I could tell you the answer to that,” he replies, “but I seriously can’t because I don’t know how I do it.” Inspiration can strike at any time, but many of his plots are based on personal experience. For instance, the first book in the William Warwick series, Nothing Ventured, features the world of art and antiques. “I have been a collector for forty years and I love art, and in fact I have just been to a major home in London and spent most of my time looking at the pictures whilst everyone else was talking to each other,” he remarks. “I always say to young authors, write what you know about because then the reader will feel at ease and realise that you know what you are talking about.”

Characters in Jeffrey Archer books are often drawn from interesting people he has met. “In the Clifton Chronicles, the main protagonist Harry Clifton is based on myself,” he admits. “William Warwick was first introduced to readers as a fictional detective created by Harry Clifton and I started to write the William Warwick series after several readers wrote to me saying they wanted to know more about him.” 

“I decided to take on that challenge and create a new series with William Warwick as the central character, but I didn’t want to write a detective story, rather a story about a detective,” he says.

“In the William Warwick series, William is based on my chief researcher, former Detective Chief Superintendent John Sutherland (rtd) who sadly had a mental breakdown and retired from the police after what he described in his autobiography as ‘one murder too many’.”

“The women in my novels are so often based on my remarkable wife who is a very strong woman, and I like strong women, so they often make their way into my books.”

It is evident that there is more than a passing likeness to his wife in the character of Beth Rainsford, a research assistant at the fictional Fitzmolean Museum that William falls in love with in Nothing Ventured. 

Once heralded by a judge during her husband’s 1987 libel trial as a vision of ‘elegance, fragrance and radiance’, Dame Mary Archer is a very distinguished scientist in her own right. Does she read her husband’s books I ask? “She does, but not until the fourteenth or fifteenth draft, and then she does offer her views,” Jeffrey Archer says. “Mary wrote a very important book on solar energy but I didn’t have a lot of views to give on that!” he laughs. 

The William Warwick series follows the protagonist through the ups and downs of his career as he battles against a powerful criminal nemesis, expert art thief Miles Faulkner, and aspires to become Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police Force. “We meet him as a Constable on the beat before he becomes a Detective in the Art and Antiques Squad, then in the second book he goes on to become a Detective Sergeant dealing with drugs and in the third book he is a Detective Inspector dealing with police corruption,” Lord Archer explains. Had he always planned the novels to be a series of eight from the outset? “No, I always planned that William Warwick would rise one rank and I had always planned that it would be a totally different subject so that it wouldn’t matter which book you picked up, but I rarely know three pages ahead what will happen.”

In Over My Dead Body William Warwick has become a Chief Inspector and has been moved to the Murder Squad.  “If I live long enough, because I am now 81, he will become a Superintendent, a Chief Superintendent, a Commander and finally he will be Commissioner in the Metropolitan Police, but I have to live to the age of 86 for William Warwick to achieve that.”

Three of the novelist’s books have already been adapted for film and television, but would he like the William Warwick series to reach the big screen? “There have been a lot of approaches and I will believe it when I see it, but I would love to see a William Warwick character,” he exclaims eagerly. “One actor could play William as he is in the first four books with someone else taking over the last four.”

The first book, Nothing Ventured, is set in the 60s at a time when technology was very different and they didn’t have mobile phones. “DNA didn’t exist, that is the biggest thing that changed crime,” Jeffrey Archer comments. “Agatha Christie couldn’t have written a novel the way she did, she would of course have adapted herself, but DNA didn’t exist as many other things didn’t exist in her time, and I have to watch very carefully which year I am in, but my two police advisors are on hand to remind me what they did themselves in any given year,” he says. Will DNA appear in future William Warwick books? “The answer is possibly, but I haven’t got a clue where I am going with those yet.”

Apart from John Sutherland, Jeffrey Archer relies on Detective Sergeant Michelle Roycroft (rtd) who has just left the force after thirty years having worked in both the Murder and Drugs Squad. “Michelle brings her own flavour and a woman’s angle,” he states. “They read the book when it reaches about its fourth or fifth draft and check every fact to make sure I don’t make a fool of myself, because between them they have got sixty years’ experience in the Metropolitan Police so they can tell me what I can and can’t do.”

How he finds time to read books himself is a mystery, but Lord Archer claims to be an avid reader. “I do read regularly – I take recommendations and if someone tells me ‘you ought to read a particular book’, I am on to it straight away, and although I do find an exceptional book now and then, it is not that common that I do.”

One book which Jeffrey Archer recommends to me is Stefan Zweig’s Beware of Pity. “It’s among my favourite books. I am a huge admirer of Stefan Zweig and I think Beware of Pity is a masterpiece and he combines the genius of being a great storyteller along with being a very fine writer.”

What would he consider to be his greatest achievement in life? “I am very proud of the fact that I ran for my country, and that I have raised over 60 million pounds as a charity auctioneer – but I think having sold over 275 million books is definitely my greatest achievement.”

Finally I ask Lord Archer if he has any
regrets in life. “Too many to spend talking to you about today,” he replies.