David Peace was born in Ossett, near Huddersfield in 1967. After graduating
from Manchester Polytechnic in 1991, he embarked upon a career teaching English
as a Foreign Language, firstly in Istanbul and then in Tokyo, which has been
his home since 1994. His first published novels were the Red Riding Quartet (1974, 1977,
1980 and 1983), adapted for
television by Channel 4 in 2009, which led to him being described as “the
British James Ellroy,” albeit with from much more pronounced left-wing
perspective. Having been named as Granta Young British Novelist of the
Year in 2003, Peace produced his greatest work GB84 in 2004, before his
most famous work so far, The Damned United, which tells of
Brian Clough’s ill-fated spell in charge of Leeds United. After a detour to his
adopted homeland, in the shape of his two-thirds completed Tokyo Trilogy, set in
immediate post war Japan, Peace’s latest novel, RED OR DEAD, finds him on
familiar thematic and geographical turf; Bill Shankly’s departure from Peace’s
own Huddersfield Town to Liverpool, chronicling both his time in charge and
retirement in 1974, after Liverpool flukily won the FA Cup over Newcastle
United. One major departure for Peace is his focus on a “good” protagonist
rather than the flawed or downright evil figures of his earlier novels. Push
spoke to David in August 2013 in Durham and September 2013 via email.
Those of
your novels set in England are set in very specific locations (Yorkshire
primarily) and equally specific points in time (1959-1985 to be precise); do
you see your role more as a chronicler of untold history and defender of those
no longer able to defend their reputations or as an interpreter and prosecutor
of the torrid obverse world of politics and the behaviour of the ruling elite
during the post war period that marked the decline and destruction of the
Social Democratic consensus?
In a word; both. Because
I think both roles go hand in hand. It’s an old cliché that history is written
by the victors. But the reason it is a cliché is because it is so bloody true. With
GB84,
for example, I wanted to show exactly the nature and the scale of the forces
and the violence used to crush the mining communities and their union, both to
defend those people who had suffered and lost so much and to accuse those who
had caused that suffering and loss. And if we don’t have an accurate account or
understanding of history then it is obviously impossible to make decisions
about the present or the future. I mean,
one of my main motivations for putting Bill Shankly’s socialism front and
centre in RED OR DEAD, aside from it being front and centre for the man
himself, was that, thinking of my own two kids and their education, they would
have never even come across the word socialism, if they hadn’t the misfortune
to live with me. Say or think what you like about socialism, but growing up in
the 1970s, we at least knew what it was and what then its potential might be. That
knowledge, and therefore choice, barely even exists these days. At least, for
now. Because I also do believe these things return and, more-often-than-not,
stronger and more potent than before. As long as we keep writing and talking
and dreaming about them, that is.
You have
lived in Japan for almost 2 decades now and published 2 novels of a proposed
trilogy set in post WWII Tokyo; how do you view your relationship with Japan?
Is it easier to write about your homeland or adopted country?
Well, Japan –
specifically Tokyo, which is the only place I’ve ever lived in Japan – is where
my kids were born and, as you say, where I’ve lived for the best part of twenty
years. And so it does feel like home now. And oddly, perhaps, that only really
hit me properly when I was sat on my sofa in Ossett watching the pictures of
the earthquake and tsunami of March, 2011. But it is much, much harder for me
to write about Japan, or at least in the way I do, than about England. I mean,
I’ve read a fair few books written about Japan by non-Japanese and come across
a fair few “mistakes”. So I am very wary of adding to those mistakes with my
own. So I suppose I feel slightly more confident writing about England. But
only slightly!
It has
been reported you left England after a sojourn between 2009 and 2011, as you
found it hard to write back in this country. How true is that? To what extent
do you feel distance adds perspective to your writing? Certainly James Joyce
didn’t find it necessary to set foot in Dublin while writing Ulysses or Finnegan’s Wake; can you see any parallels with his love / hate
relationship with Ireland and yours with Yorkshire and England as a whole?
Yes, I did find it hard
to write – well, I was writing, just even less well than usual – during that
time. And I did miss the routine I had had in Tokyo, particularly the
discipline and the concentration it gave me. And there is also the issue of
distance and perspective which, when writing a book like RED OR DEAD, is very
necessary. For me, at least. But, to be honest, rather than any dramatic
Joycean desire for exile, my inability to write well while I was back in Ossett
was more down to my own bloody willingness to be very easily distracted by the
likes of Sky Sports News. And again to be honest, I don’t think I really do
have a love / hate relationship with Yorkshire; I loved being back, I just
hated not writing well. So, as I say, I think the most important thing for me
and my writing is to be able to have a routine. And that, for many different
reasons, but mainly because the lack of distractions is easier for me to
achieve in Tokyo than in Ossett.
You have
written about Tokyo’s Year Zero as being immediately after World War II; do you
feel England has endured an epoch defining Year Zero? If so, would 1979 be the
year in question, or was it another time?
I always think 1979 is
a bit of red (or blue) herring. You read the Conservative Party manifesto for
that election now and it almost reads like a bleeding socialist tract. So I
always think 1983 was more of a turning-point. I mean, after all that had come
to pass under that first Thatcher government, and all that they were planning
for their next term, for the majority of people to still vote them back in,
regardless of the so-called “Falklands Factor”, is harder to either understand
or forgive. And if, then, there was a Year Zero for the UK, for me it was
1984-85 and the defeat of the National Union of Mineworkers. 1985 was also, of
course, the year of the Bradford Fire Disaster and Heysel, the Battle of
Beanfield, and then the Handsworth, Brixton and Tottenham riots. A bloody
rotten year. But, in my opinion, the defeat of the National Union of
Mineworkers was really Year Zero in terms of the end of the post-war social
democratic consensus we talked about above.
You spent
time in England in the summer of 2013; how do you feel the country has changed
since you left originally? I know you’re a big fan of, for example,
Huddersfield Town and The Fall; do you miss the ease of access to such items of
culture as an exile? Has there been any marked change to the social fabric of
England over the recent past? My cousin who has lived in the Basque Country for
20 years finds England to be more and more repressive with each passing year.
Any truth in this?
Big questions, Ian. The
easy one first: yes, I miss having the opportunity of watching Huddersfield
Town and The Fall. But I do get back about once a year, usually. And as we were
talking above, I was back from 2009 to 2011 and got to see quite a bit of Town
and also The Fall at the Balne Lane Working Men’s Club in Wakefield. I think
that must have been the first time I had seen them in over twenty years and
they were as great as ever. Huge crowd, too, a lot of old faces. And the woman
behind the bar told me it was the most money they’d taken since the wrestling. But
to less easy, more contentious things: I always get a bit of stick for saying
this, and I know it’s only my opinion, but I think the biggest change I’ve
noticed in England, while I’ve been away, is in places like Dewsbury and
Batley. I went to school in that area and it was very mixed. In our class there
were about ten white kids and twenty or so black and Asian kids. I wouldn’t
ever pretend it was all sweetness and light but, basically, folk got on. Or learned
how to. Now it seems me to those towns are not as well integrated as they were.
Mates of mine talk about “no-go areas” and the like. Of course, you go down to
Dewsbury market and it’s very mixed. But, in terms of housing and schooling,
there are more divisions than before. And in those two years I was back in
Ossett, the only time I met or spoke with anyone who wasn’t white was in a
take-away or a taxi. My feeling is there is a lot more distance and suspicion,
on both sides, than there used to be. But, then again, I know that is all very
subjective; same with your question about the sense of England becoming more
and more repressive. There always seems to be a new rule about something. But
that is true in Japan, too. And I’ve been stopped by the police in both
countries in the last two years. So, in both countries, the police seem
evermore curious about where I’m going and what I’ve been doing.
What are
your future writing plans? Will the Tokyo Trilogy be next? What of other
suggested titles like UKDK, The Yorkshire
Rippers (possibly about Geoffrey Boycott?) and Nineteen Forty Seven? You’ve
mentioned in the past you may give up writing novels after you’ve completed 12
and publish a collection of “very bad poetry;” if this is so, we’d be happy to
consider them for publication in Push…
Very kind of you, Ian.
Ta very much! But before I foist my poetry on Push, I have to finish the
Tokyo Trilogy, which I am doing now, and then UKDK; I see that book as
the last of a very loose quartet with GB84, THE DAMNED UTD and RED
OR DEAD. Briefly, UKDK is about Wilson, and his fall,
and Thatcher, and her rise. I also keep boxes of notes and stuff for possible,
potential books and there is a very big one dedicated to Geoffrey Boycott. The
one thing, though, that writing RED OR DEAD - and about a man in his
retirement - taught me is to think very carefully before you retire. So the bad
news is I no longer intend to stop after twelve books. But I should spend less
time talking about all these books and more time writing them!
Finally,
Ossett Town or Ossett Albion; who do you prefer?
Town, always Town. My
Grandparents lived very close to Ingfield, where the ground is now, and when we
were back living in Ossett recently, the house we rented overlooked the ground,
too. But I think it is more to do with me coming from North Ossett, than anything
else. Albion are South Ossett. A different world. And as we know, north and
south rarely mix.
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