Jane Gardam
Jane Gardam
Jane Mary Gardam OBE FRSLis an English writer of children's and adult fiction. She also writes reviews for The Spectator and The Telegraph, and writes for BBC radio. She lives in Kent, Wimbledon, and Yorkshire. She has won numerous literary awards, including the Whitbread Award twice. She was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empirein the 2009 New Year Honours...
NationalityEnglish
ProfessionWriter
Date of Birth11 July 1928
Jane Gardam quotes about
country archer ethics
English country life is more like Chekhov than The Archers or Thomas Hardy or even the Updike ethic with which it is sometimes compared.
thinking young-writers influence
I think the most dangerous influence for a young writer is to be treated with cynicism or discouragement.
book men two
Jane Austen we know never let two men converse alone in any novel because what they said would be unknown to her.
children how-to-love knows
If you've not been loved as a child, you don't know how to love a child.
ugly tribes novelists
The complexion of a novelist is seldom rosy (Paul Bailey once announced to a heavy-hearted audience of novelists at PEN that we have always been an ugly tribe). We are engaged in indoor activity, haemorrhoidal, prone to chillblains, poor of circulation.
real future forget
Somewhere inside we do know everything about ourselves. There is no real forgetting. Perhaps we know somewhere, too, about all there is to come.
would-be sensible things-to-do
I just knew I would be a writer. It just seemed the only sensible thing to do.
potter seemed sensible soon
I started to write as a child as soon as I could read, or even before, when my mother read me Beatrix Potter at bedtime. Writing seemed to me to be the only sensible way to live and be happy.
tremendous
Mum was a tremendous Anglo-Catholic. Very impressive, actually. She made me go to church for years - I still don't want to because of that.
chekhov country ethic hardy life
English country life is more like Chekhov than 'The Archers' or Thomas Hardy or even the Updike ethic with which it is sometimes compared.
children my-children happens
I gave myself to my children. It happens to some women.