Appointment in Arezzo by Alan F. Taylor

Author:Alan F. Taylor
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Birlinn Ltd

A James Thin notebook manuscript page from The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie

‘I’d like to make a classic. Why not?’ This was Muriel’s response to the plan hatched by BBC Scotland in 1995 to make a documentary about her. It was a tricky negotiation, with me playing the part of go-between. At first Muriel seemed eager then she was less so. Her health was not good; faxes would arrive from a medical centre in Essex detailing her many illnesses. When not seeing a physiotherapist she was having X-rays. On top of which she was popping antibiotics as if they were Polo mints: ‘I have to swallow over 20 antibiotics a day to combat the massive infection I harbour in my hip.’ As ever, her latest novel, which at the time was Reality and Dreams, was her priority. Just when it seemed that filming would proceed as scheduled, Muriel decided she must devote all her energy to completing the book. It was with ‘a heavy heart’ she wrote that she must postpone the proposed programme, adding: ‘I can only offer to get in touch the moment I am fairly clear of my novel . . .’

A few days later, however, following a plea from the director, Eleanor Yule, Muriel changed her mind and agreed to allow filming to go ahead, which it did at San Giovanni in September of that year. The weather was lovely: not too hot with a soothing breeze. Muriel and Penny were welcoming hosts, and their maid, Patrizia, made lasagne for lunch. My interview with Muriel, which formed the spine of the programme, took place in her part of the house, her back to an open window from which the whole of the Val di Chiana spread out like a verdant counterpane. She had a summer cold, and her eyes were rheumy, but still she sparkled like a diamond in a tiara. She may have had the body of a sedentary septuagenarian but her mind was alert.

In preparation for the film she requested that I give her some idea of the questions I might ask. She didn’t want to spoil the spontaneity of the interview, she said, ‘but perhaps a preliminary dialogue will not go amiss’. I asked first about the subject of death which I suggested was pervasive throughout her work. It was, she responded, ‘every novelist’s subject’. Memento Mori was her specific book on the subject. ‘But this and other novels are different interpretatively from most other novels.’ Her career as a novelist, she added, had coincided with her conversion to Catholicism. She had studied St Thomas Aquinas and his methods of interpretation – ‘historical (or literal), allegorical, anagogical (or spiritual), symbolical and mystical’. She had written books on all five levels. She also read the English mystics and Cardinal Newman, whose prose she thought ‘superb’. Another influence was the French novelist André Gide, especially his novel Les Faux Monnayeurs, which was translated into English as The Counterfeiters. ‘I could see how the type you

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