1 The Art of Inspiring Young Imaginations
William Nicholson and The Wind on Fire Trilogy
Dominion Post Feature Article by Trevor Agnew
A three-volume fantasy epic that is loved by children and acclaimed by adults? It sounds like The Lord of the Rings, but it is actually The Wind on Fire. Its author, William Nicholson has conquered the film world with Gladiator, and is now watching his books reach cult status. Trevor Agnew asked William Nicholson why he valued his readers’ imaginations more than a million dollars.
He may have written the screen-plays for such films as First Knight, Shadowlands and Gladiator, but William 'Bill' Nicholson refuses to sell the screen rights for his just-completed fantasy trilogy, The Wind on Fire. He estimates they would earn him more than US$1,000,000 (£685,000) but it’s no using waving big cheques at him; he’s not accepting any offers. For one thing his film scripts have made him comfortably off already. More importantly, he wants his young readers to use their own imagination to create their own movie in their minds.
There’s plenty to inspire imagination in this British author’s three vigorous, moving and funny books about Bowman and Kestrel Hath, the twins who use their psychic bond to help their family to rebel against the city-state of Aramanth, and ultimately to lead the Manth people out of slavery and back to their homeland. Along the way there are amazing battle-scenes with fleets of unmanned, wind-powered war-waggons sweeping across the plains, ritual duelling more graceful and deadly than anything in Gladiator, and a slave empire which values beautiful music and architecture but burns hostages alive. Rich in invention and characters, the trilogy has remarkable depth and is widely read by adults.
Tolkien aside, there will be comparisons made with Philip Pulman and J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series, but Nicholson won’t be making them. He has deliberately avoided reading them. “I did take trouble while I was writing the books not to read a lot of contemporary children’s fiction, just because I didn’t want to plagiarise them.”
Nicholson admits that his fertile imagination is sometimes triggered by long-absorbed images. Readers of Firesong will spot the influence of The Lotos-Eaters, Paradise Lost and Pilgrim’s Progress, as well as Beano and the William books. Nursie from Blackadder even makes a guest appearance as Lunki.
“I am very well-read,” says Nicholson. “Who knows what comes up from where? I’m forever, to my horror, discovering that there are images and ideas that I’ve lifted wholesale from other books without realising it. This sort of thing happens the whole time… but I’m not deliberately conscious of it.”
An acclaimed screen writer William Nicholson has plenty of ideas of his own. He is now an international success in several fields, with a wall-full of awards for writing. He has Oscar nominations for Gladiator and Shadowlands, and Emmy awards and BAFTAs for his television dramas. The Wind Singer has already won the Blue Peter Book of the Year, The Book I Couldn’t Put Down Award and the Smarties Golden Award. Happily married with three children, he is enjoying the fruits of success.
Yet twenty years ago, William Nicholson was at a personal crisis point in both his personal life and career. Unable to decide whether to launch out as a freelance writer, he was also – in his own words – “‘unmarried, nervous of commitment, longing for love, yet fearing love, and terrified of the responsibility.”
His salvation came from an unlikely source. The BBC commissioned him to write a drama based on the late-flowering love affair of C.S. ‘Jack’ Lewis and the poet Joy Gresham. This was a turning point.
Nicholson, then aged 35, had had lots of girlfriends but, as he puts it, “the problem had always been that I didn’t want it to get serious.” Now Nicholson found himself writing about a serious love affair. Lewis, an Oxford academic and popular theologian, had used his intellect to defend himself against the vulnerability of loving, but was then surprised and enriched by love.
S
hadowlands was a triumph for Nicholson, first as an award-winning TV drama, then as an award-winning stage play, and finally as a film directed by Richard Attenborough. When Debra Winger died in Anthony Hopkin’s arms, whole audiences wept along with him.
For Nicholson the success of Shadowlands brought a double bonus. Here began his career as a screenwriter for such blockbusters as First Knight and Gladiator. More importantly (as he sees it) came marriage and the joy of family life, a joy that is reflected in his work.
“When I was working on the story for Shadowlands I empathised very strongly with Lewis and his fear of committing himself, of taking an emotional responsibility that he couldn’t live up to. When I became somebody who could earn a living as a writer, it was as if the barriers had dropped away.
I found myself ready to make a complete and total commitment when I got married.”
“I was 40 when I was married, which is very old by normal standards. All I can say is that it’s been hugely successful, and has made me enormously happy. Unlike poor Jack Lewis, my wife has not died. Here we are fourteen years on, and I’m happier than I’ve ever been.”
His wife, Virginia Bell, also a writer. They live in East Sussex with their three children, Edmund, aged 13, Julia, 11, and Maria, 9, to whom the award-winning trilogy is dedicated. How do his children feel about their trilogy?
“They have been marvellous. Of course it has been a perfect project, from their point of view. They are just at the right age; they have all read all of them. This is lovely for me. It’s not often that any of us do things that connect with our children’s world.”
How did it feel to finish the trilogy?
“Fantastic! It was fantastic and it still is!”
“From the moment I finished Volume 2 - Slaves of the Mastery- I knew where I was going with Volume 3 - Firesong. So I was impatient to get it written and get it out.
So when I was promoting Slaves of the Mastery with audiences, last year, I kept on wanting to tell them what was going to happen and having to keep on biting my tongue, and say, ‘No, no, wait until you read it.’”
“There are a couple of big scenes in Firesong that I knew I was going to be writing, that I was longing to write. One of these was the-wind-on-fire itself, and the other was the Epilogue. I wanted to show where all these people end up, and that made me happiest of all my writing. I just loved it. The I felt… ‘Now I can leave my people happy’. I have taken them to the end and I can say goodbye to them. It was a wonderful feeling, writing it.”
What will he write next?
Never one to rest on his laurels, Bill Nicholson is currently working on four screenplays, including Oliver Stone’s up-dated Julius Caesar, set in present day Washington, and a World war 2 epic about fighting in The Philippines, probably starring Tom Cruise. Don’t expect to see any of them this year, warns Nicholson.
‘They’re all at different stages, you see, because films take forever. There’s one that I always hope is about to start shooting, although it gets permanently postponed, it seems to me. There’s another that I’m just doing final drafts on. There’s another that I’m starting. Because you’re talking years in every case.
Will there be more adventures for Bowman and Kestrel? As his Wind on Fire trilogy moves towards cult-status, Nicholson has consistently rejected all proposals for more volumes. He has seen too many other writers fall into this trap. “It’s very important not to mine the vein to exhaustion. There is an architecture to the three novels, and it would screw it up if I tried to write extra bits.”
“I have read works of genius like Dune by Frank Herbert. Dune is marvellous, but he then went on and wrote book after book after book, and it just got worse and worse. The same thing happened with Isaac Asimov’s Foundation series which were so brilliant and then they fizzled away. It’s tragic really.”
In the film world, he feels that Star Wars “was very good when it started and it has now become insultingly bad. And it makes me so angry that George Lucas had such a good story and such good characters and he has just pissed on them all. The last two films, I think, are appallingly poor.”
So the Wind Singer saga is at an end insists Nicholson. “You have to exercise a lot of self-control and say, ‘No. That is done and finished.’ And it gives me great joy to see
it there and finished.”
Trevor Agnew
First published in the Dominion-Post, Wellington, New Zealand, on August 31st 2002.
The Wind on Fire trilogy:
The Wind Singer, William Nicholson, Egmont Press
Slaves of the Mastery, William Nicholson, Egmont Press
Firesong , William Nicholson, Egmont Press
The Wind on Fire trilogy, by William Nicholson:
Three Book Summaries by Trevor Agnew:
i. The Wind Singer (2000)
From the age of two every resident of Aramanth faces a series of rigid exams which will determine every aspect of the rest of their lives. When the Hath family resist, they face savage repression. The twins Bowman and Kestrel join with the misfit Mumpo in a dangerous journey to bring freedom to their city-state. They face enough excitement for several movies before defeating the evil Morah and bringing freedom and the voice of the Wind Singer to the people of Aramanth.
ii. Slaves of the Mastery (2001)
The all-powerful Master has given his life to the welfare of his people. He has designed and built a superb city where all may live in comfort and enjoy the beauty of the buildings and music. But
the Mastery is a slave society, based on fear and the burning alive of hostages. The Master’s army destroys Aramanth and seizes its people for slave labour.
In this crisis Bowman and Kestrel, now five years older, use their psychic bond to resist The Master in different ways. Mumpo, who was despised in ‘The Wind Singer’ now becomes skilled in ritual duelling. Complex issues of freedom and power are examined: for some slavery is an improvement. Is rebellion justified or possible?
A rich cast of characters, many of whom carry on into the next novel, interact with the Hath family in a dramatic conclusion.
iii. Firesong (2002)
Freed from slavery, the Hath family and some survivors of the Manth people seek their former
homeland. Trekking through a bleak winter, Bowman and Kestrel meet their destiny, while their young sister Pinto takes up her new role.
The Manth people encounter and survive several highly original challenges on their terrible journey through the snow.
The Singer People - a band of guardians - play an important role as Albard – the greatest of them all – trains the ‘chosen one’ for their role in the apocalyptic fulfillment of the ancient prophecy. Who is the chosen one? Who is Albard? There are many surprises in the awe-inspiring and satisfying and satisfying conclusion to the saga.
Published by Egmont, UK. Distributed in NZ by Reed.
Trevor Agnew
2. More on William Nicholson's writing:
Article by Trevor Agnew (2002)
William Nicholson is a hot name in Hollywood, with Oscar nominations for his screenplays for Gladiator and Shadowlands. Now honours are flowing in for his just-completed trilogy of children’s novels The Wind on Fire. But even if you offered him a million dollars, you couldn’t buy the film rights for them. Trevor Agnew talks to the multi-talented British author about the importance of family, film success and Yoda.
The man was middle-aged, bald and sobbing. He wiped his eyes as he left the cinema. Behind him, the rest of the audience stumbled out into the night, sniffing and weeping.
The film was Shadowlands, written by William Nicholson. Debra Winger had just died in Anthony Hopkins’ arms. Having already seen Nicholson’s BBC TV drama of Shadowlands and his stage version, I knew what to expect. Even so I was amazed by the outpouring of grief.
So how does it feel to be a writer with such power over people’s emotions?
William Nicholson's first response is a great, snorting laugh. ‘It’s wonderful to think that’s what happens. That’s what you dream of. But that’s not what I set out to do.’
‘Writing is a very solitary process, so I don’t think of myself as affecting other people. Then when other people read it and love it; that’s just amazing.’
At the moment the epic people are reading and loving is Nicholson’s Firesong, final volume in The Wind on Fire trilogy, which seems certain to acquire similar status to that other three-decker epic fantasy, Lord of the Rings.
Not that Nicholson is a Tolkien enthusiast.
‘I only think it’s kind-of good. But I thought the film was wonderful and I was extremely impressed.’
Even more surprisingly, Nicholson, the professional screenwriter behind such films as First Knight and Gladiator, prefers books to films.
‘Films are usually distortions and diminutions of books. I know of very, very few films of books that are as good as their books …’ Only the Lord of the Rings and The Wizard of Oz improve on the original books.
Nicholson hit the headlines recently with reports that he had turned down offers of US $1,000,000 (£685,000) for the film rights to his trilogy. The truth is not quite so exciting. When The Wind Singer started winning awards - the Blue Peter Award for Book of the Year, The Book I Couldn’t Put Down Award, and the Smarties Golden Award - he received many bids for the film rights.
‘Because I have told my agent not to accept any requests for the film rights, at no point has it reached the stage where money has been mentioned…If I were to sell them as films, I would certainly make that amount and more. But I don’t wish to do it. At least, not yet because I’m already making money from films. I’m very well paid. So why do it?’
His other reason for refusing to let these stories be filmed is Nicholson’s belief in the importance of imagination. He wants his readers to have the experience of making the movie in their heads. ‘I want the children who read these books to be the director, and the designer and the casting director. I want them to create the books in their heads as they read them.’
An unusual feature of the Wind on Fire trilogy is that it has at its centre the strong, loving Hath family, whose members all play important parts. This emphasis on family life is rare in children’s literature, where parents are usually hurried off-stage before the adventure begins.
‘Because I love my own family very much and feel very fulfilled in my family, without even realising I was doing it, I gave very full roles to all the family members, and kept that bond throughout the trilogy as the central love drama.’
‘In a way, I think other writers do something that’s a bit of a cheat really. They flatter their child readers by making out that it’s the children who are important. The adults, - who are, in their real world, powerful - are made into non-powerful people. I feel that’s a bit of a swindle.’
His wife, Virginia Bell, is also a writer. They live in East Sussex with their three children, Edmund, aged 13, Julia, 11, and Maria, 9, to whom the award-winning trilogy is dedicated.
On the importance of his family, Nicholson becomes effusive. ‘Almost the only thing that I can say I believe in, without any ambiguity or hesitation, is the love that can happen within a family - husband and wife, parents for children, and children for parents. I think it’s extraordinarily powerful.’
‘In The Wind Singer I didn’t set out to say a family will be my hero. But, because that’s the way my life is, that’s what happened.
That’s the extraordinary thing about writing. The things that are most true to you
are what come through.’
Like Tolkien, Nicholson has lavished care on the detail of his fantasy world. He designed the Wind Singer symbol seen on the book covers, which is an important plot element, and created the ancient Manth writing. ‘There are quite a lot of readers who have broken the code, and that was a lot of fun.’ He even drew the landscape guide used by the twins in The Wind Singer.
Because Nicholson is so well-read, many of his characters reflect aspects of history and literature, none more so than the Master, a dictator who uses violence and cruelty to rule a slave empire of great beauty and culture.
Nicholson recognises the irony. ‘I do believe that if you were to go inside the head of
dictators and dangerous and violent world leaders, they wouldn’t say to you,
I am dominating the world because I am evil. They would say I am doing it because I am good. I am the servant of the people.’
A non-human character in Firesong, Jumper, has been compared to Yoda in Star Wars. Nicholson responds strongly to this.
‘My feelings about Yoda and Star Wars in general are that it was very good when it started and it has now become insultingly bad.
And it makes me so angry that George Lucas had such a good story and such good characters and he has just pissed on them all. The last two films, I think, are appallingly poor, and poor old Yoda who was such an interesting character has just become this slightly silly thing.
The result of this is that I don’t want Jumper compared with Yoda anymore. I would have done once. But I don’t any more.’
Trevor Agnew, September 22nd 2002
3. William Nicholson and Examinations:
Exams are ‘stupid assessments’
The Wind Singer created an impact because it shows the folly of a society which uses a series of rigid exams to classify its citizens for life. In Britain, as in New Zealand, this has stirred debate. With a Double First degree from Cambridge, William Nicholson feels he is able make the attack without being accused of sour grapes.
“Yes, I did well at exams. But I did well because I was taught how to pass exams.
I have no respect for that. I think everything that is of any value in me was not tested by the exams. So, as I watch my own children and I see what is of value in them, I don’t see the point of these stupid assessments.”
“It is almost as though society has become so nervous that they’re not trusting the teachers. I don’t know what it is like in New Zealand but over here our teachers aren’t paid enough and so there are quite a lot of not very good teachers. And the thing goes round and round.”
His solution is simple. Double teacher salaries. Stop setting fish exams on flying.
Trevor Agnew, September 22nd 2002
4. LOVE AND DREAMS
William Nicholson and The Wind on Fire Trilogy:
Magpies Magazine, 2002
A three-volume fantasy epic that is loved by children and acclaimed by adults? It sounds like The Lord of the Rings, but it is actually The Wind on Fire series. Its author, William Nicholson has conquered the film world with Gladiator, and is now watching his books reach cult status. Trevor Agnew asked William Nicholson why he valued his readers’ imaginations at more than a million dollars.
I first became aware of the powerful writing talent of William Nicholson when I watched a crowd leaving a cinema, where ‘Shadowlands’ had been screened. People stumbled out, sniffing, crying, weeping, and in one case, sobbing loudly. Debra Winger had just died in Anthony Hopkins’ arms. ‘Shadowlands’ earned Nicholson his first Oscar nomination.
William Nicholson was at his home in East Sussex when I asked him how it feels to be a writer with this power over people’s emotions. He gave a great snorting laugh.
"It’s wonderful to think that that’s what happens. That’s what you dream of. It’s not what I set out to do.
Writing is a very solitary process, so I don’t think of myself as affecting other people.
I think of myself as trying to get something down for myself. Then when other people read it and love it; that’s just amazing."
Many of the features of the last two novels are embedded in ‘The Wind Singer’. Did you start with a plan to write three volumes?
"No, I didn’t. What happened was I wrote the first book without knowing whether anybody would like it or want it. I didn’t consult on the subject. I wrote it between other things I was doing and sent it to my London agents.
When it became clear that it was being liked, that gave me the confidence to look at the story I had written and say to myself, ‘Actually this is not complete.’ Particularly, what you might call, the theology of it was really not present at all. So that forced me to start thinking what did I really think was going to be the outcome of the decisions made by my heroes."
"It was while the first book [The Wind Singer] was going through the proof stage, that I devised the next two [Slaves of the Mastery and Firesong] and I was just in time to insert into the proofs of the first book a couple of tiny clues to what was coming, which I hadn’t ever conceived when I was writing [it]. It was all a bit last-minute."
You went to Downside, a Catholic boarding school run by Benedictine monks.
What effect did your education there have on you?
"I was brought up as a Catholic and up until the age of about 19 or 20, I was very much a committed Catholic. Particularly because I was in a world where it was very unfashionable. I think that made me, in a rather stubborn way, go on defending the process of the Catholic religion beyond the point that I might otherwise have dropped it."
"My present position? I wouldn’t even call myself a Christian. I think the Christian religion is a cultural phenomenon. If you grow up within it, it makes sense; if you don’t grow up within it, it doesn’t. So I can understand the position of someone who grows up as a Muslim. To them it just feels right; to us it seems peculiar. Once you start understanding that, you shift to a different position. You start to look instead at the extraordinary fact that we are all pursuing meaning, trying to make sense of our lives and our worlds and our deaths. That pursuit is what I write about, in one form or another."
Your characters have spiritual lives. This is not common, especially in fantasies. You created your own ceremonies, vocabulary, rituals and customs. (The funeral address in ‘Firesong’ is very moving.) How difficult was it to create all this?
"What happens when you write is, at least with me, that you write something which feels strong. And you then think, ‘What is the next thing that would feel strong and be right to follow this?’ You find yourself therefore, heading towards ever more powerful themes.
I realised, as I was developing my world and my people, that I had to take them all the way. And that meant taking them all the way into finding their promised land, and into fulfilling their destiny. You can’t fulfil your destiny by going to Tesco’s, you know. You have to go a bit further.
Once you embark on that, with all of the permissions that an imagined world gives you, you can start saying ‘What do I believe actually happens between people?
What would I consider to be the greatest way that you could lead your life?’ "
We discussed the Singer People, the guardians who built the Wind Singer, whose silver ‘voice’ is the potent symbol that Kestrel rescues in The Wind Singer. In the later two books, the remarkable Singer People play an increasingly important role.
"Because I have created two characters, in Kestrel and Bowman, who both felt that they had some sort of destiny that made sense of their feeling of isolation and otherness, I began to think ‘Where are they going? And what would that destiny be?’
That led to the construct in the book of the Singer People, the Morah and the bit that’s explained in Firesong, about the notion that the energy between people gradually builds up and becomes something nasty that has to be lanced like a boil.
And that can only be done by the sacrifice of a group of exceptional individuals."
"In a way - although I’m talking fantasy worlds - I do believe that. When I was at the monastery school, the monks would have said that the act of praying, which they did five times a day in the church, was a sort of an engine for the cleansing of the world. By praying, even though the rest of world didn’t know and didn’t care, they were actually stopping the world from getting worse."
"It’s a very interesting idea that there can be some people who take upon themselves the task, at periodic intervals, of cleaning the dirt out of the world. That was the idea that I developed."
There are many biblical echoes in the trilogy. Do you think many of your readers realise the significance of your use of religious themes? Are you casting pearls before – er - people who don’t know pearls from marbles?
"It is very hard for me to tell. But, you know, when you write, you don’t write for millions, you write for one. If one person reads that and makes that connection, then it becomes real.
But even if they don’t do that, I think that there are certain images and certain scenes that resonate in people’s minds, even if they don’t quite know where they come from."
Your attitude to family life is refreshing. The Wind on Fire trilogy is the only children’s fantasy I can think of where the main characters’ parents are present (more or less) throughout the narrative. Usually we have orphans, or the family are separated by events.
You have kept Hanno and Ira on stage throughout, and you have also given them powerful personalities. There hasn’t been a stronger more loving family in children’s fiction. Does the Hath family reflect your own views on the family? Is family life important to you?
"Very very much so indeed. Almost the only thing I can say I believe in, without any ambiguity or hesitation, is the love that can happen within a family. Husband and wife; parents for children, and children for parents. I think it’s extraordinarily powerful.
Obviously it can go wrong and a lot of pain can take place. But, at its best, it is extremely potent."
"I didn’t set out to say a family will be my hero. But, because that’s the way my life is, that’s what happened. That’s the extraordinary thing about writing. The things that are most true to you are what come through. Because I love my own family very much and feel very fulfilled in my family, without even realising I was doing it, I gave very full roles to all the family members, and kept that bond throughout the trilogy as the central love drama."
"It was only afterwards that people said to me, ‘Do you realise that you’ve included parents?’ It hadn’t occurred to me. When I looked at other books, I thought, ‘I suppose that’s true. I wonder why?’ In a way, I think, other writers do something that’s a bit of a cheat really. They flatter their child readers by making out that it’s the children who are important, and that the adults, (who are in their real world powerful), are made into non-powerful people.
I feel that’s a bit of a swindle. I didn’t want to do that. It wasn’t a plan ahead of time.
It was something that just came out because that’s what I feel."
The success of Shadowlands on TV, stage and as a film brought you success as a writer. The power of love, the importance of commitment and the acceptance of responsibility are all important features of the Shadowlands. Was C.S. Lewis’s experience, as you recorded it in Shadowlands, an influence on your life?
"Yes. I wrote Shadowlands at a time when I was finding it very difficult to make the commitment that you need for marriage. There were several reasons for that. One was that I wanted to be a writer and I didn’t want anything to get in the way. When I was working on the story for Shadowlands I empathised very strongly with Lewis and his fear of committing himself, of taking an emotional responsibility that he couldn’t live up to."
"In a funny way, writing Shadowlands had a dual effect. One was it brought to the surface all those thoughts but the second was it was really my passport into being a writer. When I became somebody who could earn a living as a writer, almost immediately it was as if the barriers had dropped away."
"I found myself ready to make what I always knew what for me would be a complete and total commitment when I got married. I became ready.
I’d had lots of girlfriends but the problem had always been that I didn’t want it to get serious. I was 40 when I was married, which is very old by normal standards.
All I can say is that it’s been hugely successful.
And made me enormously happy and, unlike poor Jack Lewis, my wife has not died.
Here we are 14 years on, and I’m happier than I’ve ever been."
In some bookshops your books are displayed in the adult section, with other fantasy series, rather than in the Children’s section. In the first book, the twins are 10. In the other two they are 15. What age group did you have in mind when writing them?
"I didn’t write these books thinking to myself of the age of the reader. Of course I was writing for children in the sense that I was working within a context of children’s books. But I never asked myself, ‘How old are my readers?’ and I never checked my vocabulary.
Looking back, I was really writing for myself and here I am at the age of 54. If it can turn me on at the age of 54, it can turn on a few other adults."
How do your own children feel about your trilogy?
"I have three children, a boy and two girls, Edmund, Julia and Maria. They are 13, 11 and about to be 9. The trilogy is dedicated to them. They have been marvellous. Of course it has been a perfect project, from their point of view. They are just at the right age. They have all read all of them. They are terribly nice to me and loyal. Whenever people talk to us about books, they say, ‘Not as good as daddy’s book’."
"The other day, my two daughters were in our local children’s bookshop, browsing the shelves, when a woman came in and said, ‘Can you recommend some books for my son. He’s just read William Nicholson’s trilogy.’ So my daughters got up and said to my wife, ‘Look, there’s Daddy’s book’, pointing to the shelf with pride, hoping the woman would hear them.
This is was lovely for me. It’s not often that any of us do things that connect with our children’s world."
How do you feel about the statement by the critic Christina Hardyment that
‘All great children’s books linger on in the adult mind’?
"I agree with it, and I would be only too happy if it were true of mine."
I enjoy stories where you find the author has tucked away references to other books that they enjoy. In your trilogy you seem to have paid tribute to some influences.
Am I over the top in seeing Bowman as having aspects of Odysseus/Ulysses in The Odyssey? The Master kept making me think of aspects of Gulliver’s Travels and, of course, Paradise Lost. Were these deliberate or the result of a well-furnished mind?
"Not consciously. But you’re right about the well-furnished mind. I am very well-read and who knows what comes up from where? I’m forever, to my horror, discovering that there are images and ideas that I’ve lifted wholesale from other books without realising it. This sort of thing happens the whole time."
"I did take trouble while I was writing the books not to read a lot of contemporary children’s fiction, just because I didn’t want to plagiarise them.
I think you’re right in general but I’m not deliberately conscious of it."
If you haven’t read Firesong, skip this section:
The Master seems one of those larger than life fictional characters, I was amazed and delighted when he returned in ‘Firesong’ and it became clear that he was a rebel Singer.
‘Singer People never sought power in the world. Only Albard, the best of them had broken the rule of rules.’
"I liked him very much…He reckons the correct way to use this power is to make people’s lives more bearable. And the way to make people’s lives more bearable is to rule them because that is what they need. It’s a fascinating notion, the notion that you rule as an act of self-sacrifice to help others. But, of course, it is profoundly dangerous.
So I accompanied that – the notion of the man who wants to make music out of the whole city - with the man who urinates on the floor, because only he can criticise himself."
"All of these aspects of the person who takes power out of its controlled context intrigued me. I do believe that if you were to go inside the head of dictators and dangerous and violent world leaders, they wouldn’t say to you, ‘I am dominating the world because I am evil.’ They would say, ‘I am doing it because I am good.
I am the servant of the people.’ "
And The Master returns?
"It was very interesting. When I wrote the first draft of Slaves of the Mastery, the Master dies at the end. Then I started planning Firesong, and I suddenly realised I needed him. I hastily rang up the publishers and said, ‘Quick, I’m going to change two crucial sentences to make it clear that he’s not actually dead. He’s coming back.’ "
On a more frivolous level, a young reader wants to know if Jumper in ‘Firesong’ is your version of Yoda?
"My feelings about Yoda and Star Wars in general are that it was very good when it started and it has now become insultingly bad. And it makes me so angry that George Lucas had such a good story and such good characters and he has just pissed on them all. The last two films, I think, are appallingly poor and poor old Yoda who was such an interesting character has just become this slightly silly thing.
The result of this is that I don’t want Jumper compared with Yoda anymore. I would have done once. But I don’t any more."
I admire the way that some of the ‘small’ characters are so interesting. Poor Rufy Blesh caught my attention. He runs away in ‘Slaves of the Mastery’ thus causing the hostages to be burned to death. Then he reappears in ‘Firesong as a bandit, and we realise from a few terse comments that he has actually been suffering terrible guilt over those deaths all this time. He is a tiny character, but you have put enough work into him to make him a little masterpiece in his own right. Is it worth it?
"It is difficult, hence the trilogy. The funny thing is once you get the feel of the world it does work. The logic flows. What you find is that a character you’ve planted in Book 1, Rufy Blesh, is just a swotty boy.
Then you think to yourself, ‘What would happen to a swotty boy who has reached the age of 15 and has suddenly been enslaved?’ I think of the kids I know and I think he’d be angry. And what would his anger make him do? Suppose his anger made him run away. And suppose in the act of running away, a whole lot of people died – because of him. We then find him later. What is he feeling now? So I just ask myself those questions. It’s a joy to be able to touch in these little details."
"Then I think again. Wait a minute. Didn’t he write a poem? I wonder what that poem would have been? It’s a joy. All the time it grows. It grows out of what is there. I feel that it is just my job is just to ferret out the details. And that’s intensely pleasurable."
Was your early work writingTV documentaries of help in your later writing?
"Hugely valuable!
I was in the BBC from 1970 to 1987. I worked on a BBC television series, Everyman, for about 5 years. They were basic television journalism, you know, interact with people and shots of things and so on; all were in the religious, or spiritual or moral area. If you are a journalist and you go around, talking to people and putting together documentaries, you actually learn a lot…I grew more knowledgeable and wiser.
I have travelled the world. And you find yourself drawing on it…I am sure these things stick in my brain and as I go into the invention of the fantasy world, all of it is there somewhere."
How different are screenplays and novels as writing tasks?
"They are very different, for one simple reason. When you write a screenplay for a film, you are on assignment, so there are other people who are financing the project, who are asking you to write it. But the project itself is much bigger than you are and somebody – if it ever comes to fruition – will have to put up an enormous sum of money to make it happen.
So you simply can’t regard it as your own private territory. (He pauses and chuckles.)
When you write a book, nobody has paid you a penny. Nobody has asked you to do it.
You can do what you like, and maybe it will be liked and maybe it won’t. That’s the risk you take. But it means you have complete freedom."
"So when I write my books I can speak very much with my own voice. When I write films it’s my job to work with a lot of other people over a long period of time, and try to accommodate their needs, and hope that something good will come out of it.
It’s a different sort of thing entirely. "
"In any of the films I’ve written I feel I’ve played a part in it but I’ve only played one part, whereas with the books it’s just me."
So which kind of writing gives you most satisfaction?
"Well it’s the books. Completely!
But I have to say that the work on the films is very helpful to me because it keeps me sharp. On the film work I get heavily monitored, heavily criticised.
Nobody says, ‘Great, wonderful.’ It’s always, ‘This bit doesn’t work, that doesn’t work.’ I think it’s made me a much better writer."
"Also - It pays the bills. I’m actually paid by the film work. It’s a kind of freedom. Not just financial freedom but psychological freedom. Suppose the books don’t work out; never mind. Go back to film work. In every way it is beneficial to me. So I’m very grateful to the film work for giving me the freedom to play with the books."
I found myself enjoying Ira and Kestrel’s marvellous swear-words (Sagahog. Pompaprune) and many of the names in the trilogy ring well too. The family names are great. Do you enjoy creating words like these?
"I love words. I take all that very seriously. I put a lot of trouble into it. I form words. I draw up columns of words. I write down all the words that have swear-word associations, and look at ways of putting them together and making slightly new words.
The names of characters also: I try to think of words that express the character and then find a way to slightly change that word so that it becomes a name but still evokes that character. I play around with words a lot."
"Then I try to create families of names, so that you should be able to recognise from the form of the name what sort of person you are dealing with. So,if it’s one of the Mud People, all their names end in ‘um’. You know, Num and Willum and Pollum, and so on.
If it’s the Barakas, there’s usually a k in there somewhere. If it’s the Manth people there’s a lot of ‘th’ and ‘ch’ endings.
Which is what happens in the real world."
You provided a map with ‘secret’ writing in ‘The Wind Singer’ and designed the symbol and provided the map for The Wind Singer. I notice your ‘map’ is more of a symbolic representation than a real map. Is this significant?
"I only did a map for the first book, because it had a role in the story. In the English edition, it is drawn by me. In the American edition, they [Hyperion] got an artist to draw it, who did a very good job.
I created the funny alphabet, the old Manth script, which, to my amusement, in all the other languages The Wind Singer has been published in, they simply repeat, and of course it makes no sense."
"There are quite a lot of readers who have broken the code. And that was a lot of fun."
There are no maps in the other books. Did you prefer the readers to create their own mental maps?
"I decided in the end not to do a territory map, because you have to be very careful with these things. I don’t want to limit the imagination of the readers.
I thought they’ll read it and if somebody wants to, they can draw their own."
I was impressed by your refusal to sell the film rights for the trilogy I liked your comment ‘I want it to be a book that people have read, so that they can make the movie in their heads.’ Did you really turn down an offer of US $1,000,000 for the film rights? [The Western Mail, Wales, 8 June 2002]
"Sort of. This is typical journalism. I have had a lot of requests for the film rights, all of which I have turned down. But, because I have told my agent not to accept any requests for the film rights, at no point has it reached the stage where money has been mentioned."
I think I prefer the fantasy.
"That’s the other thing. I want the children who read the books to be the director, the designer and the casting director. I want them to create it in their heads as they read it.
Much of the ‘The Wind Singer’ concerns Kestrel’s attempt to overthrow a system of exams used to classify people, and direct their lives. You gained a Double First in English Literature at Cambridge. How did come to decide that examining and labelling people for life on the basis of rigid testing was wrong?
Well, in a way, the fact that I’ve done so well in exams enables me to make the attack without being accused of sour grapes. Yes, I did well at exams. But I did well because I was taught how to pass exams. I have no respect for that.
I think everything that is of any value in me was not tested by the exams. So as I watch my own children and I see what is of value in them, I don’t see the point of these stupid assessments. It seems to me they’re only of any use if you’re very specific about it. If you want somebody to drive your car, then obviously you want to know whether they can drive. If you want somebody to be a rocket scientist, you want to know if they understand rocket science.
But short of that, what you want is to give people the opportunity to be excited by being alive, by the world they’re in, by everything that can be learned and to find who they are. They will then pursue the thing that comes best to them. They’ll learn it.
There’ll be no need to push them with exams. They’ll be hungry. They’ll want to do it all by themselves.
It is almost as though society has become so nervous they’re not trusting the teachers.
I don’t know what it is like in New Zealand but over here our teachers aren’t paid enough and so there are quite a lot of not very good teachers. And the thing goes round and round."
You have a number of very funny sequences in the trilogy. Humour must be the trickiest form of writing.
"Fantastic! It was fantastic and it still is! It’s been a marvellous feeling of ‘Golly, there it is!’ From the moment I finished Volume 2 [Slaves of the Mastery], I knew where I was going with Volume 3 [Firesong]. So I was impatient to get it written and get it out.
When I was promoting Slaves of the Mastery with audiences, I kept on wanting to tell them what was going to happen in Firesong, and having to keep on biting my tongue, and say, ‘No, no, wait until you read it.’
There are a couple of big scenes in Firesong that I knew I was going to be writing, that I was longing to write. One of which was the wind-on-fire itself and the other was the Epilogue. I just knew that I wanted to show where all these people end up. And that made me happiest of all my writing. I just loved it, and then I felt, ‘There, now I can leave my people happy. I have taken them to the end and I can say goodbye to them.’ It was a wonderful feeling, writing it."
Will there be more adventures for Bowman and Kestrel? As his Wind on Fire trilogy moves towards cult-status, Nicholson has consistently rejected all proposals for more volumes. He has seen too many other writers fall into this trap.
"It’s very important not to mine the vein to exhaustion. There is an architecture to the three novels, and it would screw it up if I tried to write extra bits.
I have watched works of genius like Dune by Frank Herbert. Dune is marvellous, but he then went on and wrote book after book after book, and it just got worse and worse.
The same thing happened with [Isaac] Asimov’s Foundation series which were so brilliant and then fizzled away. It’s tragic really
You have to exercise a lot of self-control and say, ‘No that is done and finished.’
And it gives me great joy to see it there and finished."
Interview with Trevor Agnew, first printed in Magpies Magazine, 2002.
William Nicholson and The Wind on Fire Trilogy
Dominion Post Feature Article by Trevor Agnew
A three-volume fantasy epic that is loved by children and acclaimed by adults? It sounds like The Lord of the Rings, but it is actually The Wind on Fire. Its author, William Nicholson has conquered the film world with Gladiator, and is now watching his books reach cult status. Trevor Agnew asked William Nicholson why he valued his readers’ imaginations more than a million dollars.
He may have written the screen-plays for such films as First Knight, Shadowlands and Gladiator, but William 'Bill' Nicholson refuses to sell the screen rights for his just-completed fantasy trilogy, The Wind on Fire. He estimates they would earn him more than US$1,000,000 (£685,000) but it’s no using waving big cheques at him; he’s not accepting any offers. For one thing his film scripts have made him comfortably off already. More importantly, he wants his young readers to use their own imagination to create their own movie in their minds.
There’s plenty to inspire imagination in this British author’s three vigorous, moving and funny books about Bowman and Kestrel Hath, the twins who use their psychic bond to help their family to rebel against the city-state of Aramanth, and ultimately to lead the Manth people out of slavery and back to their homeland. Along the way there are amazing battle-scenes with fleets of unmanned, wind-powered war-waggons sweeping across the plains, ritual duelling more graceful and deadly than anything in Gladiator, and a slave empire which values beautiful music and architecture but burns hostages alive. Rich in invention and characters, the trilogy has remarkable depth and is widely read by adults.
Tolkien aside, there will be comparisons made with Philip Pulman and J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series, but Nicholson won’t be making them. He has deliberately avoided reading them. “I did take trouble while I was writing the books not to read a lot of contemporary children’s fiction, just because I didn’t want to plagiarise them.”
Nicholson admits that his fertile imagination is sometimes triggered by long-absorbed images. Readers of Firesong will spot the influence of The Lotos-Eaters, Paradise Lost and Pilgrim’s Progress, as well as Beano and the William books. Nursie from Blackadder even makes a guest appearance as Lunki.
“I am very well-read,” says Nicholson. “Who knows what comes up from where? I’m forever, to my horror, discovering that there are images and ideas that I’ve lifted wholesale from other books without realising it. This sort of thing happens the whole time… but I’m not deliberately conscious of it.”An acclaimed screen writer William Nicholson has plenty of ideas of his own. He is now an international success in several fields, with a wall-full of awards for writing. He has Oscar nominations for Gladiator and Shadowlands, and Emmy awards and BAFTAs for his television dramas. The Wind Singer has already won the Blue Peter Book of the Year, The Book I Couldn’t Put Down Award and the Smarties Golden Award. Happily married with three children, he is enjoying the fruits of success.
Yet twenty years ago, William Nicholson was at a personal crisis point in both his personal life and career. Unable to decide whether to launch out as a freelance writer, he was also – in his own words – “‘unmarried, nervous of commitment, longing for love, yet fearing love, and terrified of the responsibility.”His salvation came from an unlikely source. The BBC commissioned him to write a drama based on the late-flowering love affair of C.S. ‘Jack’ Lewis and the poet Joy Gresham. This was a turning point.
Nicholson, then aged 35, had had lots of girlfriends but, as he puts it, “the problem had always been that I didn’t want it to get serious.” Now Nicholson found himself writing about a serious love affair. Lewis, an Oxford academic and popular theologian, had used his intellect to defend himself against the vulnerability of loving, but was then surprised and enriched by love.
S
hadowlands was a triumph for Nicholson, first as an award-winning TV drama, then as an award-winning stage play, and finally as a film directed by Richard Attenborough. When Debra Winger died in Anthony Hopkin’s arms, whole audiences wept along with him.For Nicholson the success of Shadowlands brought a double bonus. Here began his career as a screenwriter for such blockbusters as First Knight and Gladiator. More importantly (as he sees it) came marriage and the joy of family life, a joy that is reflected in his work.
“When I was working on the story for Shadowlands I empathised very strongly with Lewis and his fear of committing himself, of taking an emotional responsibility that he couldn’t live up to. When I became somebody who could earn a living as a writer, it was as if the barriers had dropped away.
I found myself ready to make a complete and total commitment when I got married.”
“I was 40 when I was married, which is very old by normal standards. All I can say is that it’s been hugely successful, and has made me enormously happy. Unlike poor Jack Lewis, my wife has not died. Here we are fourteen years on, and I’m happier than I’ve ever been.”
His wife, Virginia Bell, also a writer. They live in East Sussex with their three children, Edmund, aged 13, Julia, 11, and Maria, 9, to whom the award-winning trilogy is dedicated. How do his children feel about their trilogy?
“They have been marvellous. Of course it has been a perfect project, from their point of view. They are just at the right age; they have all read all of them. This is lovely for me. It’s not often that any of us do things that connect with our children’s world.”
How did it feel to finish the trilogy?
“Fantastic! It was fantastic and it still is!”
“From the moment I finished Volume 2 - Slaves of the Mastery- I knew where I was going with Volume 3 - Firesong. So I was impatient to get it written and get it out.
So when I was promoting Slaves of the Mastery with audiences, last year, I kept on wanting to tell them what was going to happen and having to keep on biting my tongue, and say, ‘No, no, wait until you read it.’”
“There are a couple of big scenes in Firesong that I knew I was going to be writing, that I was longing to write. One of these was the-wind-on-fire itself, and the other was the Epilogue. I wanted to show where all these people end up, and that made me happiest of all my writing. I just loved it. The I felt… ‘Now I can leave my people happy’. I have taken them to the end and I can say goodbye to them. It was a wonderful feeling, writing it.”What will he write next?
Never one to rest on his laurels, Bill Nicholson is currently working on four screenplays, including Oliver Stone’s up-dated Julius Caesar, set in present day Washington, and a World war 2 epic about fighting in The Philippines, probably starring Tom Cruise. Don’t expect to see any of them this year, warns Nicholson.
‘They’re all at different stages, you see, because films take forever. There’s one that I always hope is about to start shooting, although it gets permanently postponed, it seems to me. There’s another that I’m just doing final drafts on. There’s another that I’m starting. Because you’re talking years in every case.
Will there be more adventures for Bowman and Kestrel? As his Wind on Fire trilogy moves towards cult-status, Nicholson has consistently rejected all proposals for more volumes. He has seen too many other writers fall into this trap. “It’s very important not to mine the vein to exhaustion. There is an architecture to the three novels, and it would screw it up if I tried to write extra bits.”
“I have read works of genius like Dune by Frank Herbert. Dune is marvellous, but he then went on and wrote book after book after book, and it just got worse and worse. The same thing happened with Isaac Asimov’s Foundation series which were so brilliant and then they fizzled away. It’s tragic really.”
In the film world, he feels that Star Wars “was very good when it started and it has now become insultingly bad. And it makes me so angry that George Lucas had such a good story and such good characters and he has just pissed on them all. The last two films, I think, are appallingly poor.”
So the Wind Singer saga is at an end insists Nicholson. “You have to exercise a lot of self-control and say, ‘No. That is done and finished.’ And it gives me great joy to see
it there and finished.”
Trevor Agnew
First published in the Dominion-Post, Wellington, New Zealand, on August 31st 2002.
The Wind on Fire trilogy:
The Wind Singer, William Nicholson, Egmont Press
Slaves of the Mastery, William Nicholson, Egmont Press
Firesong , William Nicholson, Egmont Press
The Wind on Fire trilogy, by William Nicholson:
Three Book Summaries by Trevor Agnew:
i. The Wind Singer (2000)
From the age of two every resident of Aramanth faces a series of rigid exams which will determine every aspect of the rest of their lives. When the Hath family resist, they face savage repression. The twins Bowman and Kestrel join with the misfit Mumpo in a dangerous journey to bring freedom to their city-state. They face enough excitement for several movies before defeating the evil Morah and bringing freedom and the voice of the Wind Singer to the people of Aramanth.
ii. Slaves of the Mastery (2001)
The all-powerful Master has given his life to the welfare of his people. He has designed and built a superb city where all may live in comfort and enjoy the beauty of the buildings and music. But
the Mastery is a slave society, based on fear and the burning alive of hostages. The Master’s army destroys Aramanth and seizes its people for slave labour.In this crisis Bowman and Kestrel, now five years older, use their psychic bond to resist The Master in different ways. Mumpo, who was despised in ‘The Wind Singer’ now becomes skilled in ritual duelling. Complex issues of freedom and power are examined: for some slavery is an improvement. Is rebellion justified or possible?
A rich cast of characters, many of whom carry on into the next novel, interact with the Hath family in a dramatic conclusion.
iii. Firesong (2002)
Freed from slavery, the Hath family and some survivors of the Manth people seek their former
homeland. Trekking through a bleak winter, Bowman and Kestrel meet their destiny, while their young sister Pinto takes up her new role.The Manth people encounter and survive several highly original challenges on their terrible journey through the snow.
The Singer People - a band of guardians - play an important role as Albard – the greatest of them all – trains the ‘chosen one’ for their role in the apocalyptic fulfillment of the ancient prophecy. Who is the chosen one? Who is Albard? There are many surprises in the awe-inspiring and satisfying and satisfying conclusion to the saga.
Published by Egmont, UK. Distributed in NZ by Reed.
Trevor Agnew
2. More on William Nicholson's writing:
Article by Trevor Agnew (2002)
William Nicholson is a hot name in Hollywood, with Oscar nominations for his screenplays for Gladiator and Shadowlands. Now honours are flowing in for his just-completed trilogy of children’s novels The Wind on Fire. But even if you offered him a million dollars, you couldn’t buy the film rights for them. Trevor Agnew talks to the multi-talented British author about the importance of family, film success and Yoda.The man was middle-aged, bald and sobbing. He wiped his eyes as he left the cinema. Behind him, the rest of the audience stumbled out into the night, sniffing and weeping.
The film was Shadowlands, written by William Nicholson. Debra Winger had just died in Anthony Hopkins’ arms. Having already seen Nicholson’s BBC TV drama of Shadowlands and his stage version, I knew what to expect. Even so I was amazed by the outpouring of grief.
So how does it feel to be a writer with such power over people’s emotions?William Nicholson's first response is a great, snorting laugh. ‘It’s wonderful to think that’s what happens. That’s what you dream of. But that’s not what I set out to do.’
‘Writing is a very solitary process, so I don’t think of myself as affecting other people. Then when other people read it and love it; that’s just amazing.’
At the moment the epic people are reading and loving is Nicholson’s Firesong, final volume in The Wind on Fire trilogy, which seems certain to acquire similar status to that other three-decker epic fantasy, Lord of the Rings.
Not that Nicholson is a Tolkien enthusiast.
‘I only think it’s kind-of good. But I thought the film was wonderful and I was extremely impressed.’
Even more surprisingly, Nicholson, the professional screenwriter behind such films as First Knight and Gladiator, prefers books to films.
‘Films are usually distortions and diminutions of books. I know of very, very few films of books that are as good as their books …’ Only the Lord of the Rings and The Wizard of Oz improve on the original books.
Nicholson hit the headlines recently with reports that he had turned down offers of US $1,000,000 (£685,000) for the film rights to his trilogy. The truth is not quite so exciting. When The Wind Singer started winning awards - the Blue Peter Award for Book of the Year, The Book I Couldn’t Put Down Award, and the Smarties Golden Award - he received many bids for the film rights.
‘Because I have told my agent not to accept any requests for the film rights, at no point has it reached the stage where money has been mentioned…If I were to sell them as films, I would certainly make that amount and more. But I don’t wish to do it. At least, not yet because I’m already making money from films. I’m very well paid. So why do it?’
His other reason for refusing to let these stories be filmed is Nicholson’s belief in the importance of imagination. He wants his readers to have the experience of making the movie in their heads. ‘I want the children who read these books to be the director, and the designer and the casting director. I want them to create the books in their heads as they read them.’
An unusual feature of the Wind on Fire trilogy is that it has at its centre the strong, loving Hath family, whose members all play important parts. This emphasis on family life is rare in children’s literature, where parents are usually hurried off-stage before the adventure begins.
‘Because I love my own family very much and feel very fulfilled in my family, without even realising I was doing it, I gave very full roles to all the family members, and kept that bond throughout the trilogy as the central love drama.’
‘In a way, I think other writers do something that’s a bit of a cheat really. They flatter their child readers by making out that it’s the children who are important. The adults, - who are, in their real world, powerful - are made into non-powerful people. I feel that’s a bit of a swindle.’
His wife, Virginia Bell, is also a writer. They live in East Sussex with their three children, Edmund, aged 13, Julia, 11, and Maria, 9, to whom the award-winning trilogy is dedicated.
On the importance of his family, Nicholson becomes effusive. ‘Almost the only thing that I can say I believe in, without any ambiguity or hesitation, is the love that can happen within a family - husband and wife, parents for children, and children for parents. I think it’s extraordinarily powerful.’
‘In The Wind Singer I didn’t set out to say a family will be my hero. But, because that’s the way my life is, that’s what happened.
That’s the extraordinary thing about writing. The things that are most true to you
are what come through.’
Like Tolkien, Nicholson has lavished care on the detail of his fantasy world. He designed the Wind Singer symbol seen on the book covers, which is an important plot element, and created the ancient Manth writing. ‘There are quite a lot of readers who have broken the code, and that was a lot of fun.’ He even drew the landscape guide used by the twins in The Wind Singer.
Because Nicholson is so well-read, many of his characters reflect aspects of history and literature, none more so than the Master, a dictator who uses violence and cruelty to rule a slave empire of great beauty and culture.
Nicholson recognises the irony. ‘I do believe that if you were to go inside the head of
dictators and dangerous and violent world leaders, they wouldn’t say to you,
I am dominating the world because I am evil. They would say I am doing it because I am good. I am the servant of the people.’
A non-human character in Firesong, Jumper, has been compared to Yoda in Star Wars. Nicholson responds strongly to this.
‘My feelings about Yoda and Star Wars in general are that it was very good when it started and it has now become insultingly bad.
And it makes me so angry that George Lucas had such a good story and such good characters and he has just pissed on them all. The last two films, I think, are appallingly poor, and poor old Yoda who was such an interesting character has just become this slightly silly thing.
The result of this is that I don’t want Jumper compared with Yoda anymore. I would have done once. But I don’t any more.’
Trevor Agnew, September 22nd 2002
3. William Nicholson and Examinations:
Exams are ‘stupid assessments’
The Wind Singer created an impact because it shows the folly of a society which uses a series of rigid exams to classify its citizens for life. In Britain, as in New Zealand, this has stirred debate. With a Double First degree from Cambridge, William Nicholson feels he is able make the attack without being accused of sour grapes.
“Yes, I did well at exams. But I did well because I was taught how to pass exams.
I have no respect for that. I think everything that is of any value in me was not tested by the exams. So, as I watch my own children and I see what is of value in them, I don’t see the point of these stupid assessments.”
“It is almost as though society has become so nervous that they’re not trusting the teachers. I don’t know what it is like in New Zealand but over here our teachers aren’t paid enough and so there are quite a lot of not very good teachers. And the thing goes round and round.”
His solution is simple. Double teacher salaries. Stop setting fish exams on flying.
Trevor Agnew, September 22nd 2002
4. LOVE AND DREAMSWilliam Nicholson and The Wind on Fire Trilogy:
Magpies Magazine, 2002
A three-volume fantasy epic that is loved by children and acclaimed by adults? It sounds like The Lord of the Rings, but it is actually The Wind on Fire series. Its author, William Nicholson has conquered the film world with Gladiator, and is now watching his books reach cult status. Trevor Agnew asked William Nicholson why he valued his readers’ imaginations at more than a million dollars.
I first became aware of the powerful writing talent of William Nicholson when I watched a crowd leaving a cinema, where ‘Shadowlands’ had been screened. People stumbled out, sniffing, crying, weeping, and in one case, sobbing loudly. Debra Winger had just died in Anthony Hopkins’ arms. ‘Shadowlands’ earned Nicholson his first Oscar nomination.
William Nicholson was at his home in East Sussex when I asked him how it feels to be a writer with this power over people’s emotions. He gave a great snorting laugh.
"It’s wonderful to think that that’s what happens. That’s what you dream of. It’s not what I set out to do.
Writing is a very solitary process, so I don’t think of myself as affecting other people.
I think of myself as trying to get something down for myself. Then when other people read it and love it; that’s just amazing."
Many of the features of the last two novels are embedded in ‘The Wind Singer’. Did you start with a plan to write three volumes?
"No, I didn’t. What happened was I wrote the first book without knowing whether anybody would like it or want it. I didn’t consult on the subject. I wrote it between other things I was doing and sent it to my London agents.
When it became clear that it was being liked, that gave me the confidence to look at the story I had written and say to myself, ‘Actually this is not complete.’ Particularly, what you might call, the theology of it was really not present at all. So that forced me to start thinking what did I really think was going to be the outcome of the decisions made by my heroes."
"It was while the first book [The Wind Singer] was going through the proof stage, that I devised the next two [Slaves of the Mastery and Firesong] and I was just in time to insert into the proofs of the first book a couple of tiny clues to what was coming, which I hadn’t ever conceived when I was writing [it]. It was all a bit last-minute."
You went to Downside, a Catholic boarding school run by Benedictine monks.
What effect did your education there have on you?
"I was brought up as a Catholic and up until the age of about 19 or 20, I was very much a committed Catholic. Particularly because I was in a world where it was very unfashionable. I think that made me, in a rather stubborn way, go on defending the process of the Catholic religion beyond the point that I might otherwise have dropped it."
"My present position? I wouldn’t even call myself a Christian. I think the Christian religion is a cultural phenomenon. If you grow up within it, it makes sense; if you don’t grow up within it, it doesn’t. So I can understand the position of someone who grows up as a Muslim. To them it just feels right; to us it seems peculiar. Once you start understanding that, you shift to a different position. You start to look instead at the extraordinary fact that we are all pursuing meaning, trying to make sense of our lives and our worlds and our deaths. That pursuit is what I write about, in one form or another."
Your characters have spiritual lives. This is not common, especially in fantasies. You created your own ceremonies, vocabulary, rituals and customs. (The funeral address in ‘Firesong’ is very moving.) How difficult was it to create all this?
"What happens when you write is, at least with me, that you write something which feels strong. And you then think, ‘What is the next thing that would feel strong and be right to follow this?’ You find yourself therefore, heading towards ever more powerful themes.
I realised, as I was developing my world and my people, that I had to take them all the way. And that meant taking them all the way into finding their promised land, and into fulfilling their destiny. You can’t fulfil your destiny by going to Tesco’s, you know. You have to go a bit further.
Once you embark on that, with all of the permissions that an imagined world gives you, you can start saying ‘What do I believe actually happens between people?
What would I consider to be the greatest way that you could lead your life?’ "
We discussed the Singer People, the guardians who built the Wind Singer, whose silver ‘voice’ is the potent symbol that Kestrel rescues in The Wind Singer. In the later two books, the remarkable Singer People play an increasingly important role.
"Because I have created two characters, in Kestrel and Bowman, who both felt that they had some sort of destiny that made sense of their feeling of isolation and otherness, I began to think ‘Where are they going? And what would that destiny be?’
That led to the construct in the book of the Singer People, the Morah and the bit that’s explained in Firesong, about the notion that the energy between people gradually builds up and becomes something nasty that has to be lanced like a boil.
And that can only be done by the sacrifice of a group of exceptional individuals."
"In a way - although I’m talking fantasy worlds - I do believe that. When I was at the monastery school, the monks would have said that the act of praying, which they did five times a day in the church, was a sort of an engine for the cleansing of the world. By praying, even though the rest of world didn’t know and didn’t care, they were actually stopping the world from getting worse."
"It’s a very interesting idea that there can be some people who take upon themselves the task, at periodic intervals, of cleaning the dirt out of the world. That was the idea that I developed."
There are many biblical echoes in the trilogy. Do you think many of your readers realise the significance of your use of religious themes? Are you casting pearls before – er - people who don’t know pearls from marbles?
"It is very hard for me to tell. But, you know, when you write, you don’t write for millions, you write for one. If one person reads that and makes that connection, then it becomes real.
But even if they don’t do that, I think that there are certain images and certain scenes that resonate in people’s minds, even if they don’t quite know where they come from."
Your attitude to family life is refreshing. The Wind on Fire trilogy is the only children’s fantasy I can think of where the main characters’ parents are present (more or less) throughout the narrative. Usually we have orphans, or the family are separated by events.
You have kept Hanno and Ira on stage throughout, and you have also given them powerful personalities. There hasn’t been a stronger more loving family in children’s fiction. Does the Hath family reflect your own views on the family? Is family life important to you?
"Very very much so indeed. Almost the only thing I can say I believe in, without any ambiguity or hesitation, is the love that can happen within a family. Husband and wife; parents for children, and children for parents. I think it’s extraordinarily powerful.
Obviously it can go wrong and a lot of pain can take place. But, at its best, it is extremely potent."
"I didn’t set out to say a family will be my hero. But, because that’s the way my life is, that’s what happened. That’s the extraordinary thing about writing. The things that are most true to you are what come through. Because I love my own family very much and feel very fulfilled in my family, without even realising I was doing it, I gave very full roles to all the family members, and kept that bond throughout the trilogy as the central love drama."
"It was only afterwards that people said to me, ‘Do you realise that you’ve included parents?’ It hadn’t occurred to me. When I looked at other books, I thought, ‘I suppose that’s true. I wonder why?’ In a way, I think, other writers do something that’s a bit of a cheat really. They flatter their child readers by making out that it’s the children who are important, and that the adults, (who are in their real world powerful), are made into non-powerful people.
I feel that’s a bit of a swindle. I didn’t want to do that. It wasn’t a plan ahead of time.
It was something that just came out because that’s what I feel."
The success of Shadowlands on TV, stage and as a film brought you success as a writer. The power of love, the importance of commitment and the acceptance of responsibility are all important features of the Shadowlands. Was C.S. Lewis’s experience, as you recorded it in Shadowlands, an influence on your life?
"Yes. I wrote Shadowlands at a time when I was finding it very difficult to make the commitment that you need for marriage. There were several reasons for that. One was that I wanted to be a writer and I didn’t want anything to get in the way. When I was working on the story for Shadowlands I empathised very strongly with Lewis and his fear of committing himself, of taking an emotional responsibility that he couldn’t live up to."
"In a funny way, writing Shadowlands had a dual effect. One was it brought to the surface all those thoughts but the second was it was really my passport into being a writer. When I became somebody who could earn a living as a writer, almost immediately it was as if the barriers had dropped away."
"I found myself ready to make what I always knew what for me would be a complete and total commitment when I got married. I became ready.
I’d had lots of girlfriends but the problem had always been that I didn’t want it to get serious. I was 40 when I was married, which is very old by normal standards.
All I can say is that it’s been hugely successful.
And made me enormously happy and, unlike poor Jack Lewis, my wife has not died.
Here we are 14 years on, and I’m happier than I’ve ever been."
In some bookshops your books are displayed in the adult section, with other fantasy series, rather than in the Children’s section. In the first book, the twins are 10. In the other two they are 15. What age group did you have in mind when writing them?
"I didn’t write these books thinking to myself of the age of the reader. Of course I was writing for children in the sense that I was working within a context of children’s books. But I never asked myself, ‘How old are my readers?’ and I never checked my vocabulary.
Looking back, I was really writing for myself and here I am at the age of 54. If it can turn me on at the age of 54, it can turn on a few other adults."
How do your own children feel about your trilogy?
"I have three children, a boy and two girls, Edmund, Julia and Maria. They are 13, 11 and about to be 9. The trilogy is dedicated to them. They have been marvellous. Of course it has been a perfect project, from their point of view. They are just at the right age. They have all read all of them. They are terribly nice to me and loyal. Whenever people talk to us about books, they say, ‘Not as good as daddy’s book’."
"The other day, my two daughters were in our local children’s bookshop, browsing the shelves, when a woman came in and said, ‘Can you recommend some books for my son. He’s just read William Nicholson’s trilogy.’ So my daughters got up and said to my wife, ‘Look, there’s Daddy’s book’, pointing to the shelf with pride, hoping the woman would hear them.
This is was lovely for me. It’s not often that any of us do things that connect with our children’s world."
How do you feel about the statement by the critic Christina Hardyment that
‘All great children’s books linger on in the adult mind’?
"I agree with it, and I would be only too happy if it were true of mine."
I enjoy stories where you find the author has tucked away references to other books that they enjoy. In your trilogy you seem to have paid tribute to some influences.
Am I over the top in seeing Bowman as having aspects of Odysseus/Ulysses in The Odyssey? The Master kept making me think of aspects of Gulliver’s Travels and, of course, Paradise Lost. Were these deliberate or the result of a well-furnished mind?
"Not consciously. But you’re right about the well-furnished mind. I am very well-read and who knows what comes up from where? I’m forever, to my horror, discovering that there are images and ideas that I’ve lifted wholesale from other books without realising it. This sort of thing happens the whole time."
"I did take trouble while I was writing the books not to read a lot of contemporary children’s fiction, just because I didn’t want to plagiarise them.
I think you’re right in general but I’m not deliberately conscious of it."
If you haven’t read Firesong, skip this section:
The Master seems one of those larger than life fictional characters, I was amazed and delighted when he returned in ‘Firesong’ and it became clear that he was a rebel Singer.
‘Singer People never sought power in the world. Only Albard, the best of them had broken the rule of rules.’
"I liked him very much…He reckons the correct way to use this power is to make people’s lives more bearable. And the way to make people’s lives more bearable is to rule them because that is what they need. It’s a fascinating notion, the notion that you rule as an act of self-sacrifice to help others. But, of course, it is profoundly dangerous.
So I accompanied that – the notion of the man who wants to make music out of the whole city - with the man who urinates on the floor, because only he can criticise himself."
"All of these aspects of the person who takes power out of its controlled context intrigued me. I do believe that if you were to go inside the head of dictators and dangerous and violent world leaders, they wouldn’t say to you, ‘I am dominating the world because I am evil.’ They would say, ‘I am doing it because I am good.
I am the servant of the people.’ "
And The Master returns?
"It was very interesting. When I wrote the first draft of Slaves of the Mastery, the Master dies at the end. Then I started planning Firesong, and I suddenly realised I needed him. I hastily rang up the publishers and said, ‘Quick, I’m going to change two crucial sentences to make it clear that he’s not actually dead. He’s coming back.’ "
On a more frivolous level, a young reader wants to know if Jumper in ‘Firesong’ is your version of Yoda?
"My feelings about Yoda and Star Wars in general are that it was very good when it started and it has now become insultingly bad. And it makes me so angry that George Lucas had such a good story and such good characters and he has just pissed on them all. The last two films, I think, are appallingly poor and poor old Yoda who was such an interesting character has just become this slightly silly thing.
The result of this is that I don’t want Jumper compared with Yoda anymore. I would have done once. But I don’t any more."
I admire the way that some of the ‘small’ characters are so interesting. Poor Rufy Blesh caught my attention. He runs away in ‘Slaves of the Mastery’ thus causing the hostages to be burned to death. Then he reappears in ‘Firesong as a bandit, and we realise from a few terse comments that he has actually been suffering terrible guilt over those deaths all this time. He is a tiny character, but you have put enough work into him to make him a little masterpiece in his own right. Is it worth it?
"It is difficult, hence the trilogy. The funny thing is once you get the feel of the world it does work. The logic flows. What you find is that a character you’ve planted in Book 1, Rufy Blesh, is just a swotty boy.
Then you think to yourself, ‘What would happen to a swotty boy who has reached the age of 15 and has suddenly been enslaved?’ I think of the kids I know and I think he’d be angry. And what would his anger make him do? Suppose his anger made him run away. And suppose in the act of running away, a whole lot of people died – because of him. We then find him later. What is he feeling now? So I just ask myself those questions. It’s a joy to be able to touch in these little details."
"Then I think again. Wait a minute. Didn’t he write a poem? I wonder what that poem would have been? It’s a joy. All the time it grows. It grows out of what is there. I feel that it is just my job is just to ferret out the details. And that’s intensely pleasurable."
Was your early work writingTV documentaries of help in your later writing?
"Hugely valuable!
I was in the BBC from 1970 to 1987. I worked on a BBC television series, Everyman, for about 5 years. They were basic television journalism, you know, interact with people and shots of things and so on; all were in the religious, or spiritual or moral area. If you are a journalist and you go around, talking to people and putting together documentaries, you actually learn a lot…I grew more knowledgeable and wiser.
I have travelled the world. And you find yourself drawing on it…I am sure these things stick in my brain and as I go into the invention of the fantasy world, all of it is there somewhere."
How different are screenplays and novels as writing tasks?
"They are very different, for one simple reason. When you write a screenplay for a film, you are on assignment, so there are other people who are financing the project, who are asking you to write it. But the project itself is much bigger than you are and somebody – if it ever comes to fruition – will have to put up an enormous sum of money to make it happen.
So you simply can’t regard it as your own private territory. (He pauses and chuckles.)
When you write a book, nobody has paid you a penny. Nobody has asked you to do it.
You can do what you like, and maybe it will be liked and maybe it won’t. That’s the risk you take. But it means you have complete freedom."
"So when I write my books I can speak very much with my own voice. When I write films it’s my job to work with a lot of other people over a long period of time, and try to accommodate their needs, and hope that something good will come out of it.
It’s a different sort of thing entirely. "
"In any of the films I’ve written I feel I’ve played a part in it but I’ve only played one part, whereas with the books it’s just me."
So which kind of writing gives you most satisfaction?
"Well it’s the books. Completely!
But I have to say that the work on the films is very helpful to me because it keeps me sharp. On the film work I get heavily monitored, heavily criticised.
Nobody says, ‘Great, wonderful.’ It’s always, ‘This bit doesn’t work, that doesn’t work.’ I think it’s made me a much better writer."
"Also - It pays the bills. I’m actually paid by the film work. It’s a kind of freedom. Not just financial freedom but psychological freedom. Suppose the books don’t work out; never mind. Go back to film work. In every way it is beneficial to me. So I’m very grateful to the film work for giving me the freedom to play with the books."
I found myself enjoying Ira and Kestrel’s marvellous swear-words (Sagahog. Pompaprune) and many of the names in the trilogy ring well too. The family names are great. Do you enjoy creating words like these?
"I love words. I take all that very seriously. I put a lot of trouble into it. I form words. I draw up columns of words. I write down all the words that have swear-word associations, and look at ways of putting them together and making slightly new words.
The names of characters also: I try to think of words that express the character and then find a way to slightly change that word so that it becomes a name but still evokes that character. I play around with words a lot."
"Then I try to create families of names, so that you should be able to recognise from the form of the name what sort of person you are dealing with. So,if it’s one of the Mud People, all their names end in ‘um’. You know, Num and Willum and Pollum, and so on.
If it’s the Barakas, there’s usually a k in there somewhere. If it’s the Manth people there’s a lot of ‘th’ and ‘ch’ endings.
Which is what happens in the real world."
You provided a map with ‘secret’ writing in ‘The Wind Singer’ and designed the symbol and provided the map for The Wind Singer. I notice your ‘map’ is more of a symbolic representation than a real map. Is this significant?
"I only did a map for the first book, because it had a role in the story. In the English edition, it is drawn by me. In the American edition, they [Hyperion] got an artist to draw it, who did a very good job.
I created the funny alphabet, the old Manth script, which, to my amusement, in all the other languages The Wind Singer has been published in, they simply repeat, and of course it makes no sense."
"There are quite a lot of readers who have broken the code. And that was a lot of fun."
There are no maps in the other books. Did you prefer the readers to create their own mental maps?
"I decided in the end not to do a territory map, because you have to be very careful with these things. I don’t want to limit the imagination of the readers.
I thought they’ll read it and if somebody wants to, they can draw their own."
I was impressed by your refusal to sell the film rights for the trilogy I liked your comment ‘I want it to be a book that people have read, so that they can make the movie in their heads.’ Did you really turn down an offer of US $1,000,000 for the film rights? [The Western Mail, Wales, 8 June 2002]
"Sort of. This is typical journalism. I have had a lot of requests for the film rights, all of which I have turned down. But, because I have told my agent not to accept any requests for the film rights, at no point has it reached the stage where money has been mentioned."
I think I prefer the fantasy.
"So did the journalist. What he said to me was, ‘What would you have got had you said yes?’ I said. ‘I can’t tell’. So he said ‘But can you give me some idea?’
I know what I’m paid for writing films and I know that there are three books which means three films. And I know that I would be paid for the film rights as well.
So he said ‘Would a million dollars be appropriate?’
Now I happen to think that a million dollars would be way short. So I said, ‘You can say a possible million dollars.’
He just said a million dollars.
I’m afraid that’s journalism. They’re just not interested in qualifications. If I were to sell them as films, I would certainly make that amount and more. But I don’t wish to do it. At least, not yet, because I’m already making money from films. I’m very well paid. I don’t have to do it for the money. So why do it?"
"And if you think about it I didn’t write them as films. Films are not the final version of the book. Films are usually distortions and diminutions of books. I know of very, very few films of books that are as good as their books. That’s for the very simple reason that there’s more in books than you can put in films. The book is the thing. That’s the real experience."
The same report quotes you as saying, ‘I want it to be a book that people have read so that they can make the movie in their heads.’ The reporter got that right?
I know what I’m paid for writing films and I know that there are three books which means three films. And I know that I would be paid for the film rights as well.
So he said ‘Would a million dollars be appropriate?’
Now I happen to think that a million dollars would be way short. So I said, ‘You can say a possible million dollars.’
He just said a million dollars.
I’m afraid that’s journalism. They’re just not interested in qualifications. If I were to sell them as films, I would certainly make that amount and more. But I don’t wish to do it. At least, not yet, because I’m already making money from films. I’m very well paid. I don’t have to do it for the money. So why do it?"
"And if you think about it I didn’t write them as films. Films are not the final version of the book. Films are usually distortions and diminutions of books. I know of very, very few films of books that are as good as their books. That’s for the very simple reason that there’s more in books than you can put in films. The book is the thing. That’s the real experience."
The same report quotes you as saying, ‘I want it to be a book that people have read so that they can make the movie in their heads.’ The reporter got that right?
"That’s the other thing. I want the children who read the books to be the director, the designer and the casting director. I want them to create it in their heads as they read it.
Much of the ‘The Wind Singer’ concerns Kestrel’s attempt to overthrow a system of exams used to classify people, and direct their lives. You gained a Double First in English Literature at Cambridge. How did come to decide that examining and labelling people for life on the basis of rigid testing was wrong?
Well, in a way, the fact that I’ve done so well in exams enables me to make the attack without being accused of sour grapes. Yes, I did well at exams. But I did well because I was taught how to pass exams. I have no respect for that.
I think everything that is of any value in me was not tested by the exams. So as I watch my own children and I see what is of value in them, I don’t see the point of these stupid assessments. It seems to me they’re only of any use if you’re very specific about it. If you want somebody to drive your car, then obviously you want to know whether they can drive. If you want somebody to be a rocket scientist, you want to know if they understand rocket science.
But short of that, what you want is to give people the opportunity to be excited by being alive, by the world they’re in, by everything that can be learned and to find who they are. They will then pursue the thing that comes best to them. They’ll learn it.
There’ll be no need to push them with exams. They’ll be hungry. They’ll want to do it all by themselves.
It is almost as though society has become so nervous they’re not trusting the teachers.
I don’t know what it is like in New Zealand but over here our teachers aren’t paid enough and so there are quite a lot of not very good teachers. And the thing goes round and round."
You have a number of very funny sequences in the trilogy. Humour must be the trickiest form of writing.
"It’s odd about humour. I have never thought of myself as particularly humorous.
When I write a work like this, certain things just tickle me, and I find myself playing with them. It makes me laugh and then I think maybe it’ll make other people laugh.
It’s not the sort of thing you can set out to write. If somebody said to me ‘say something funny,’ I could not.
But it all comes out of character. Humour is the kind of incongruity, or the lack of fit, between people’s longings and the slightly clumsy reality of their lives. And perhaps their own knowledge of that. I don’t consciously do it but it delights me when it comes."
I notice your early reading included Beano and Richmal Crompton’s William series. Did they help form your sense of humour?
When I write a work like this, certain things just tickle me, and I find myself playing with them. It makes me laugh and then I think maybe it’ll make other people laugh.
It’s not the sort of thing you can set out to write. If somebody said to me ‘say something funny,’ I could not.
But it all comes out of character. Humour is the kind of incongruity, or the lack of fit, between people’s longings and the slightly clumsy reality of their lives. And perhaps their own knowledge of that. I don’t consciously do it but it delights me when it comes."
I notice your early reading included Beano and Richmal Crompton’s William series. Did they help form your sense of humour?
"Not just Beano, of course. There’s the William books [by Richmal Crompton] when I was young. There’s all of the influences on my generation from Monty Python, very importantly whom I still revere as being just supreme as humorists, and John Cleese, and things like Fawlty Towers, or more recently Blackadder, which I think are just works of genius.
There so much stuff, the English tradition that is still going strong, in a particular kind of dry humour. I just love it."
How did it feel to finish the trilogy?
There so much stuff, the English tradition that is still going strong, in a particular kind of dry humour. I just love it."
How did it feel to finish the trilogy?
"Fantastic! It was fantastic and it still is! It’s been a marvellous feeling of ‘Golly, there it is!’ From the moment I finished Volume 2 [Slaves of the Mastery], I knew where I was going with Volume 3 [Firesong]. So I was impatient to get it written and get it out.
When I was promoting Slaves of the Mastery with audiences, I kept on wanting to tell them what was going to happen in Firesong, and having to keep on biting my tongue, and say, ‘No, no, wait until you read it.’
There are a couple of big scenes in Firesong that I knew I was going to be writing, that I was longing to write. One of which was the wind-on-fire itself and the other was the Epilogue. I just knew that I wanted to show where all these people end up. And that made me happiest of all my writing. I just loved it, and then I felt, ‘There, now I can leave my people happy. I have taken them to the end and I can say goodbye to them.’ It was a wonderful feeling, writing it."
Will there be more adventures for Bowman and Kestrel? As his Wind on Fire trilogy moves towards cult-status, Nicholson has consistently rejected all proposals for more volumes. He has seen too many other writers fall into this trap.
"It’s very important not to mine the vein to exhaustion. There is an architecture to the three novels, and it would screw it up if I tried to write extra bits.
I have watched works of genius like Dune by Frank Herbert. Dune is marvellous, but he then went on and wrote book after book after book, and it just got worse and worse.
The same thing happened with [Isaac] Asimov’s Foundation series which were so brilliant and then fizzled away. It’s tragic really
You have to exercise a lot of self-control and say, ‘No that is done and finished.’
And it gives me great joy to see it there and finished."
Interview with Trevor Agnew, first printed in Magpies Magazine, 2002.
5. William Nicholson Trivia
Trivia William Nicholson:
*Born 1948.
*Prefers to be called Bill.
*Hair: dark brown.
*Eyes: hazel.
*Early authors: E. Nesbit, Robert Louis Stevenson, Dickens.
*If his mother felt he was watching too much television, she cut the plug off the set.
*Likes: going to bed early, white burgundy, hot baths.
*Doesn’t like: jet lag, worrying about money, answering questions about himself.
* Favourite book: Just William by Richmal Crompton.
* Favourite writer: Tolstoy.
*Best-known screenplays: Gladiator, Shadowlands, The Legend of Grey Owl, Crime of the Century, Firelight, First Knight.
William Nicholson is currently working on four screenplays, including Oliver Stone’s up-dated Julius Caesar, set in present day Washington, and a World War 2 epic about fighting in The Philippines, probably starring Tom Cruise. Don’t expect to see any of them this year, warns Nicholson. ‘They’re all at different stages, you see, because films take forever. There’s one that I always hope is about to start shooting…There’s another that I’m just doing final drafts on. There’s another that I’m starting. …You’re talking years in every case.’
6. William Nicholson: Firesong
Press Book Review
The Wind Singer, Slaves of the Mastery, Firesong, (The Wind on Fire trilogy),
William Nicholson, Egmont UK (Reed: NZ distributors), paperback.
The Wind on Fire trilogy is complete! What a gripping series. Burglary was threatened when fans learned I had Firesong in my house. It’s certainly a book worth going to prison for.
William Nicholson is the screen-writer whose strong sense of spiritual values made Shadowlands a
triumph and gave the intellectual cutting-edge to the blockbuster Gladiator. In The Wind on Fire trilogy he has added a remarkable new factor to children’s fiction: the family! Although the twins Kestrel and Bowman are at the centre of the saga, their parents Hanno and Ira, and little sister Pinto are powerful personalities. There isn’t a stronger more loving family in children’s fiction.
In The Wind Singer the city-state of Aramanth is a colour-coded status society, with every aspect of life, from clothing to housing, decided by a rigid exam system. When Kestrel resists, the Hath family face reprisals. Linked by a psychic bond, the twins are helped by the misfit Mumpo to escape in order to return freedom to the people of Aramanth. As well as being exciting and dramatic, their adventures are also full of humour. This makes such aspects as the army of Zars, with their beautiful, smiling faces chanting, ‘Kill, kill, kill’, even more frightening.
With its satisfying conclusion The Wind Singer can stand alone, but the underlying issues are faced in the other two novels.
Slaves of the Mastery begins five years later as a ruthless army destroys Aramanth ‘fat and helpless as a mother hen’ and carries its people off into slavery. The Master, a complex and fascinating character, has created The High Domain, rich in magnificent buildings and superb music. There people live in comfort and safety. Yet even the leading generals are branded slaves, and hostages are burned alive to ensure obedience. Issues are never simple in Nicholson’s world.
Bowman uses his developing psychic powers to resist The Master, while Kestrel finds herself helping a princess’s romantic ambitions in the very funny Court of Gang. Many characters develop in remarkable ways. Mumpo becomes skilled in ritual duelling, the former emperor finds fulfilment as a cowman and Ira’s role as a prophet is recognised. As the powerless and powerful struggle, the intricate plot comes to a dramatic conclusion.
In Firesong, the surviving Manth people are now free to seek their homeland. Following the prophecies of Ira, they trek through a brutal winter, facing not only bandits, wolves and starvation but also far more sinister threats. Several characters from earlier in the series return in surprising new roles, while familiar characters become more complex and interesting personalities
The twins meet the Singer People, a band of guardians whose role is to defeat the evil Morah, even at the cost of their own lives. As the people approach their homeland, and the apocalyptic fulfilment of the ancient prophecy, the twins have to face their destiny. Nothing is quite as expected and there are many surprises. Nicholson has written a thought-provoking and satisfying conclusion.
The Wind on Fire trilogy is a richly detailed adventure which looks deep into the human soul. It rewards readers of all ages, and is destined to become a beloved classic.
Trevor Agnew
First published in The Press, Christchurch, New Zealand, in 2002.
Trivia William Nicholson:
*Born 1948.
*Prefers to be called Bill.
*Hair: dark brown.
*Eyes: hazel.
*Early authors: E. Nesbit, Robert Louis Stevenson, Dickens.
*If his mother felt he was watching too much television, she cut the plug off the set.
*Likes: going to bed early, white burgundy, hot baths.
*Doesn’t like: jet lag, worrying about money, answering questions about himself.
* Favourite book: Just William by Richmal Crompton.
* Favourite writer: Tolstoy.
*Best-known screenplays: Gladiator, Shadowlands, The Legend of Grey Owl, Crime of the Century, Firelight, First Knight.
William Nicholson is currently working on four screenplays, including Oliver Stone’s up-dated Julius Caesar, set in present day Washington, and a World War 2 epic about fighting in The Philippines, probably starring Tom Cruise. Don’t expect to see any of them this year, warns Nicholson. ‘They’re all at different stages, you see, because films take forever. There’s one that I always hope is about to start shooting…There’s another that I’m just doing final drafts on. There’s another that I’m starting. …You’re talking years in every case.’
6. William Nicholson: Firesong
Press Book Review
The Wind Singer, Slaves of the Mastery, Firesong, (The Wind on Fire trilogy),
William Nicholson, Egmont UK (Reed: NZ distributors), paperback.
The Wind on Fire trilogy is complete! What a gripping series. Burglary was threatened when fans learned I had Firesong in my house. It’s certainly a book worth going to prison for.
William Nicholson is the screen-writer whose strong sense of spiritual values made Shadowlands a
triumph and gave the intellectual cutting-edge to the blockbuster Gladiator. In The Wind on Fire trilogy he has added a remarkable new factor to children’s fiction: the family! Although the twins Kestrel and Bowman are at the centre of the saga, their parents Hanno and Ira, and little sister Pinto are powerful personalities. There isn’t a stronger more loving family in children’s fiction.In The Wind Singer the city-state of Aramanth is a colour-coded status society, with every aspect of life, from clothing to housing, decided by a rigid exam system. When Kestrel resists, the Hath family face reprisals. Linked by a psychic bond, the twins are helped by the misfit Mumpo to escape in order to return freedom to the people of Aramanth. As well as being exciting and dramatic, their adventures are also full of humour. This makes such aspects as the army of Zars, with their beautiful, smiling faces chanting, ‘Kill, kill, kill’, even more frightening.
With its satisfying conclusion The Wind Singer can stand alone, but the underlying issues are faced in the other two novels.
Slaves of the Mastery begins five years later as a ruthless army destroys Aramanth ‘fat and helpless as a mother hen’ and carries its people off into slavery. The Master, a complex and fascinating character, has created The High Domain, rich in magnificent buildings and superb music. There people live in comfort and safety. Yet even the leading generals are branded slaves, and hostages are burned alive to ensure obedience. Issues are never simple in Nicholson’s world.
Bowman uses his developing psychic powers to resist The Master, while Kestrel finds herself helping a princess’s romantic ambitions in the very funny Court of Gang. Many characters develop in remarkable ways. Mumpo becomes skilled in ritual duelling, the former emperor finds fulfilment as a cowman and Ira’s role as a prophet is recognised. As the powerless and powerful struggle, the intricate plot comes to a dramatic conclusion.
In Firesong, the surviving Manth people are now free to seek their homeland. Following the prophecies of Ira, they trek through a brutal winter, facing not only bandits, wolves and starvation but also far more sinister threats. Several characters from earlier in the series return in surprising new roles, while familiar characters become more complex and interesting personalities
The twins meet the Singer People, a band of guardians whose role is to defeat the evil Morah, even at the cost of their own lives. As the people approach their homeland, and the apocalyptic fulfilment of the ancient prophecy, the twins have to face their destiny. Nothing is quite as expected and there are many surprises. Nicholson has written a thought-provoking and satisfying conclusion.
The Wind on Fire trilogy is a richly detailed adventure which looks deep into the human soul. It rewards readers of all ages, and is destined to become a beloved classic.
Trevor Agnew
First published in The Press, Christchurch, New Zealand, in 2002.
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