Er dana and ana holmes talk about the influence of their parents on collette's writing. Collette went to a village school in France during the early days of the third republic, when state education was introduced. Both her parents were republican so she didn't go to boarding school like many other French girls at the time. Er dana: "If you love language, even if you don't understand it, you realize that lang age can take you to places that are unknown"
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss one of the outstanding French writers of the twentieth century. The novels of Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette (1873 - 1954) always had women at their centre, from youth to mid-life to old age, and they were phenomenally popular, at first for their freshness and frankness about women’s lives, as in the Claudine stories, and soon for their sheer quality as she developed as a writer. Throughout her career she intrigued readers by inserting herself, or a character with her name, into her works, fictionalising her life as a way to share her insight into the human experience.
With
Diana Holmes
Professor of French at the University of Leeds
Michèle Roberts
Writer, novelist, poet and Emeritus Professor of Creative Writing at the University of East Anglia
And
Belinda Jack
Fellow and Tutor in French Literature and Language at Christ Church, University of Oxford
Producer: Simon Tillotson