“Great LezBritian” is a fortnightly stroll through the very best of British lesbo-centric entertainment and culture. Plus there will be some jolly good interviews with the top ladies who are waving the flag for gay UK.
This week the BBC confirmed to us that they will screen Oxford Film & Television’s The Secret Diaries of Miss Anne Lister on BBC Two on May 31, which is indeed super news.
After watching the film at its premiere, we were entirely bowled over by it and so went to meet its writer Jane English (who also wrote several episodes of Channel 4’s brilliant Sugar Rush).
Over a pot of tea at King’s Cross Station, she told us that she spent 12 months poring over Anne’s diaries, which she kept sprawled over her kitchen table. This process gave her an unmistakable passion for Anne’s remarkable life and also a voice to answer her writer’s block whenever she had one.
Although it is bewildering that such an intrepid and inspiring woman could have remained largely unknown, we hope that this film will be witnessed by an audience en masse so as to introduce all and sundry to the wonderful world of Miss Lister.
AfterEllen.com: It was lovely to meet you at the premiere, how did you feel on the night?
Jane English: I was so nervous beforehand and it felt quite a relief to see the finished film as I had only seen a work in progress. It was nice to watch it with such an appreciative audience and to get the laughs in the right places and such a positive reaction at the end – it was a lovely feeling.
AE: How did you get involved the project?
JE: Oxford Film and Television came up with the idea of doing the drama and a documentary too and I just got an email one day with this taster material – a brief biography of this woman Anne Lister and some extracts from her diary. I was reading the text, thinking “Why have I not heard of this woman?” I couldn’t believe it! I went for an interview with Oxford and got the job.
AE: Like you, a lot of people had probably not heard of Anne Lister before, and you are now bringing her to a wide audience — that must be quite a satisfying feeling?
JE: She is probably only well-known in academia if you take Women’s Studies or Lesbian and Gay Studies but certainly not outside. So, yes, I love the thought that we are bringing this incredible woman to light whose life story turns all that we thought we knew about women during this period on its head.
AE: How would you describe her character to people that are not familiar with Anne?
JE: I think her character was such that she couldn’t be anything but herself. She was ever-curious, ever-searching, bold, intelligent and determined. She seized life with both hands and lived everyday to its full and got very annoyed with herself if she felt she was wasting time. She just got on with it, which I think is a brilliant lesson for women.
AE: One of the things that struck me from about the film is how guilt-free Anne Lister is about her sexuality and for the time that seems very unusual?
JE: Well she writes her diaries with such frankness, which would even be astonishing today. You’re right, there is no angst from her – ‘Why do I like women?’ There is none of that, it is just I am like this, it is my God-given nature and so it is my duty to live like this — and, by God, did she. [Both laugh]
For two months I was just reading her diaries and they were absolute page turners. I wanted to know what would happen with all the affairs she was having – and her frankness about her sex life just adds to the interest of reading them. [Both laugh]
AE: How did you decide upon the start point of the film, when there was so much from the diaries that you could have extracted?
JE: It was incredibly difficult because she lead such an eventful life and she was such a multi-faceted character that I really believe it could have been a 10-part returning drama series.
AE: Would you have liked that?
JE: It would have been great as I could have gone in to so much more detail, but the passages that really leapt out at me as having the strongest, most emotional story were the ones with Mariana.
Some of the incidents with Mariana are so vivid, for example, when they meet in a Manchester hotel – two women meeting in a hotel basically to have sex in the period of Jane Austen is wow! That’s just incredible and had to be in the film and the later incident when Anne rushes across the moors to intercept Mariana’s carriage is so cinematic.
I think Anne saw Mariana as her soul-mate but it was never going to happen. I have had to paraphrase a lot of what happened but ultimately the relationship was driving her crazy and there was so many things she wanted to do with her life that she had to give her up. She needed a relationship that kept her more on an even keel, which is what she got with Ann Walker but I do think it was quite tragic that Anne and Mariana could never get it together.
AE: Watching the film I hope that she did end up having a happy life with Ann Walker because although it was gut-wrenching that she couldn’t be with her one true love, she did at least get to live her life with someone that she could at least be herself with.
JE: It wasn’t the happiest marriage but I think it is a triumph that she found anyone at all in the period that was willing to live with her. There were frustrations between them because they are two very different characters; Anne Lister was so outgoing and Ann Walker was so introverted, but they travelled widely together.
Anne Lister died whilst they were traveling in Russia together and Ann Walker spent six months in Russia trying to get Anne Lister’s body sent back to Halifax with her diaries, which I think speaks volumes about her feelings. There is another whole film that could be written about their relationship.
AE: Did you read anything from the diaries that made you feel uncomfortable or reluctant to use in the film?
JE:Mariana did get a venereal disease from her husband, which she passed onto Anne who, in turn, passed it on to Tibbs. While my first instinct was to use everything that you wouldn’t see in a Jane Austen drama – and I’ve never seen anything about sexually transmitted diseases – in the end I thought it was a bit yucky and would sully the romance somewhat.
AE: How much of the film are your words and how much have you lifted straight from the diary?
JE: I have tried to use as many of Anne’s words as possible. Most of the voice-over is straight from the diaries. The things that you think she can’t possibly have said are probably verbatim quotes. Other than that, I tried to write in her style and use as much of the vocabulary from the diaries as possible, because she has such a wonderful droll turn of phrase, and I really wanted to bring out the humour. She is such a wry commentator on her own life and the other characters in Halifax, a trait I think she shares with Jane Austen
AE: The film is much funnier than we had anticipated because we had put it into the Andrew Davies screenplay adaptation box – did you feel a pressure to get yourself out of that box by making it especially funny?
JE: I was really keen to do things differently. I think in a sense the Sarah Waters adaptations are coming-out stories, but I love that this story kicks off with Anne and Marianna as fully-fledged lesbians in the midst of an affair. So their story is not about how they come to terms with their feelings, but rather how they sustain their relationship against all the odds.
AE: We think Maxine Peake’s performance as Anne Lister is brilliant, what did you think of the choice of cast?
JE: I was hoping and praying they would get the right Anne Lister, and when I was told that Maxine Peake had accepted it I did a little jump for joy. She commits so fully to her roles and she really did this with Anne Lister – she gave everything to it. She also has such a brilliant light touch with humour. I was worried that they might cast someone over earnest, but she has the right balance of humour, strength and vulnerability. I think she nailed it, and Helena Whitbread, who knows Anne Lister better than anyone said she approved too.
AE: Director James Kent’s speech at the premiere was very moving. He talked about his pride, as a gay director, that this film will resonate so strongly with people watching – is this something you feel as a gay writer?
JE: I think for me personally, there was so much I could identify with in the diaries and I think for all gay women there will be much to identify with. From a lesbian point of view, Anne Lister is an important part of history and the fact that until now, it has been an untold history, makes the film feel important and exciting too. But ultimately it’s a universal story about the highs and lows of love. I hope it resonates in some way with everyone who watches it.
AE: You wrote some episodes of Sugar Rush, which was such a popular and pretty groundbreaking show. How was that to work on? Was there a bit of pressure because it was the first teen show of its kind?
JE: Sugar Rush was a brilliant show to work on. What I am proudest about is the real truth at the heart of the first series of dealing with the unrequited love of a best friend. This is something that happens often to young gay girls. The first person you have that unbearable, torturous teenage crush on is someone in your close circle of friends and you don’t know whether to act on it or not.
With both Kim in Sugar Rush and also with Anne Lister, I felt like I wrote from the inside out; about how they felt, thought and obsessed. The pressure I felt was to capture the truth of those emotions. If people can empathise with these characters – gay or straight – then that is the greatest service I can do as a writer, and for the lesbian cause if you like!
AE: I heard that there was going to be a third series but it got pulled at the last minute?
JE: We did meet and we chatted about storylines for a third series. Everyone involved in the series was up for another one – we were as perplexed as everyone else that it didn’t happen. I felt that there was so much more we could have done with Kim and Sugar. In the second series we tried things out to see whether people would buy into Kim having a relationship with another woman, so I was really disappointed not to have things developed further.
AE: What would you have Kim and Sugar do in series 3?
JE: We were going to get them together in a flat and just have more crazy adventures together. We hadn’t decided whether they would be a couple. I don’t know if they could have been together. From a writer’s perspective, the constant sexual tension is wonderful and the thought that they could get together at any time makes it all the more exciting.
AE: Is there anything else you’d like to add?
JE: Can I just say to the readers of AfterEllen.com that my one hope for the film is that it leads you to the diaries themselves because they are such a rewarding and inspiring read – especially Helen Whitbread’s first book, I Know My Own Heart.
The Secret Diaries of Miss Anne Lister premieres 31st May at 9 pm on BBC Two.
“Great LezBritain” authors Sarah, a Londoner, and Lee, a Glaswegian, met in a gay discotheque one bleak mid winter, eight years ago and have been shacked up together ever since. When not watching Tipping The Velvet, they find time to write, run a PR company, DJ at their own club nights and love a bit of jam on toast. Follow them on Twitter at greatlezbritain.
