08.06.18
www.thebookseller.com
INTERVIEW PIERS TORDAY
19 EXTRACT
imagination and libraries. In a playful echo of Narnia’s Professor Kirke, a Torday character asks “What do they teach you in your schools?” “Grammar, mainly,” is the morose response and an issue Torday is passionate about. “Reading, writing, telling and sharing stories are the building blocks of humanity and civilisation. They are created by the imagination and to reduce reading in schools to a set of data and metrics is, I think, so misguided.” Reading, he believes, is about “wonder and joy and pleasure and freedom and risk and exploration” and he sees libraries with their capacity for children “to roam free and make unsupervised choices that could lead to discovery” as central to this. He fears that critical thinking skills are at risk and that knowledge is in danger of becoming piecemeal and knee-deep. “You’re potentially creating a society which is less connected and less harmonious,” he says, where people may share the views of his White Witch character Jana who observes that, “A little wonder is a dangerous thing.” Torday grew up in Northumberland. His father
worked for the family engineering business and his mother ran a children’s bookshop in Hexham. Visitors to the shop included Roald Dahl and Eva Ibbotson and his early years were surrounded by books. Torday initially looked to his childhood loves of theatre and TV as career options. “Essentially I’ve tried to spend my life doing things I enjoyed as a child,” he laughs. Working in
production and writing for TV proved to be invaluable experience. “You have to write a lot, you have to boil ideas down to their essence and you have to pitch ideas, discuss ideas and fight for your idea endlessly.” But it was only when his father Paul Torday published his own début, Salmon Fishing in the Yemen, in 2007 that Piers began to see writing as a serious option. An idea for a big family drama about animals had got nowhere on TV so he enrolled on a creative writing course with Arvon and wrote it as a book. His début The Last Wild was published to wide acclaim in 2013 and the trilogy went on to win the Guardian Children’s Fiction Prize. Quercus has bought three books in The Lost Magician series; the first has a beautifully escapist cover illustration by Ben Mantle. The second book is set in 1984 and will star the children of The Lost Magician’s protagonists while a third book is set in the future. The government research framing device will provide the series story arc: who is the lost magician and why has he created this world? Torday may use a traditional fantasy plot but the
contrast between the nostalgia and the futuristic elements of his Unreads feels fiercely original and will develop over the course of the series. As we move into a future ever more reliant on data, artificial intelligence and automation, exploring this element was vital. “Children really do want a book that connects with the modern world they live in.”
It was a kind of manor house, of which there are many in that part of the world, and to the children it just looked very old and very smart. The stone was honey coloured, blazing in the afternoon sun, and there were roses clambering up the side. They twisted over windows so full of sunlight that the children couldn’t see into the house at all. It felt more like the house was looking out at them. “Welcome to Barfield Hall,” said Professor Kelly, applying the brake expertly, which made a satisfying hiss. “Very old, even older than me. Also comes with the job.” The children made faces at each other. They didn’t know what the Professor’s job was. All they knew was they were to stay here for the summer while their mother searched for a new home in London. The Professor was a friend of her mother, although the exact nature of that connection was shrouded in mystery.
“Mrs Martin, the housekeeper, will serve you some tea in the drawing room at four,”called out the Professor, already disappearing through the open front door. “Feel free to explore, but the top floor is out of bounds. It’s not . . .” The rest of her words
were lost as she melted into a shadowy corridor, and faded from view.
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