Ben Apfelbaum

DYMOCKS LITERARY LUNCH : CRIME WRITER ANN CLEEVES

Ann Cleeves

Ann Cleeves and Philip Clark
Ann Cleeves
Ann Cleeves

 

The Dymocks Literary Lunch featuring Ann Cleeves was one of the most attended at which I have attended.

Fortunately, in her home country of the United Kingdom she is also equally appreciated. As well as receiving an OBE for her services to Literature and Libraries this year, she has won the Duncan Lawrie Dagger, is a recipient  of the Cartier Diamond Dagger from the Crime Writer’s Association, and has been awarded an Honorary Doctorate of Letters by the University of Sunderland, amongst other honours and awards. She was capably interviewed by Philip Clark from the ABC’s Nightlife radio program which brought out fascinating elements of Ann Cleeves life and writing. 

The first thing that Anne Cleeves wanted to do was to explode the myth that she wrote the screenplays for the Vera television series. As she pointed out, she has only written ten Vera Stanhope novels, yet there are 40 episodes in the TV series so far. She then went on to reveal how the TV series got made. Her publisher had not promoted the book very well and it ended up in remainder bins. 

A producer from Granada ITV studios picked up the neglected book, read it and saw its potential as a TV show but told Ann at the time that she would only commit to it being made if Brenda Blethyn would accept the role. She did, and  created one of the most beloved UK detectives in television history. Ann and Brenda Blethyn became good friends and in fact have attended book signings together.

Having been born in the nineteen fifties Ann noticed that there were a number of unmarried, mature age women in demanding roles. After World War 2 many women gave up their jobs for the returning soldiers. Vera, Ann surmised, was a woman who refused to do so, nor to marry.

When asked where her inspiration came from, she mentioned three things- the why rather than who and how of a crime matters and it must have a strong sense of place. The third thing is that she rode on a lot of public transport and would listen in to passenger conversations to create her characters, although she would camouflage them a little such that the commuters would not recognise their conversations. Returning to the importance of place, the only stipulation was that the screenwriter must live in the Northumberland region of England whilst the series was being made. This was agreed to. 

For the first eleven years of her life she lived in the sunny north of Devon. However after dropping out of University she applied to be a cook at the Bird Observatory on the remote Scottish island of Fair Isle. She remarked that she traveled on a boat called the Good Shepherd. At the Observatory she met and eventually married her ornithologist, Tim Cleeves. After they were married she traveled with him to an even more remote and uninhabited island with nothing much to do.

It was then that she commenced writing. Naturally the landscape made a big impression upon her and from this her Shetland quartet of novels emerged. Once again this was turned in. to a successful tv series featuring Inspector Jimmy Perez. She said that she gave him such an exotic name was the fact that in the fifteenth century a ship from the Spanish armada foundered on Shetland with fifty or so survivors. Ann felt that could have been a descendant of one of the survivors. 

As to why she stopped writing Shetland novels, was the fact there were so few people on Shetland and surrounding Isles that she ran out of people to be murdered. When her husband died, a number of gay people she knew helped her pull out of the depths of her grief. She was inspired to write a series of crime novels featuring  Inspector Venn. These novels too, have been made into a tv series entitled the Long Call. So as not to cause any offence she had them vetted by gay  reviewers. She also said that ironically Ven’s marriage was the happiest of all her other characters. 

She offered a scoop that another series of Shetland will be made but without Jimmy Perez. Ann Cleeves was in Australia to promote her latest Vera book entitled ‘The Rising Tide’. As an exception to the other Vera’s, this one is set in her childhood of Devon, there is a reunion, and naturally one of the guests is murdered.  The queue for the book signing was also very long yet she had the time to charm and delight every purchaser, just as she had done so whilst being interviewed by Phillip Clark.

Text and pics by Ben Apfelbaum

Published by Ben Apfelbaum

My photography began when my father handed me the proverbial brownie box camera as a child. As cameras developed I went through Fujica and Olympus range finders graduating to my first single lens reflex camera, the Minolta SRT101, the latter being the greatest facilitator to my growth as a photographer. Digital photography has only added to this. I was a regular contributor to Camera Craft magazine (Australian Camera ) for over three years. During Australia’s Bicentennial year (1988) I made it a personal project to document the celebrations. This culminated in the creation of a book of my photos which was published in 1989. The book was called CELEBRATING AUSTRALIA and came with an accompanying calendar. My works have appeared in a number of publications including the coffee book entitled MY AUSTRALIA (1989), publisher Robertsbridge Severn. This book had a preface by the then Australian Prime Minister Bob Hawke. I was a co-photographer on a book entitled SYDNEY- DISCOVER THE CITY with text written by Robert Treborlang. Major Mitchell Press was the publisher. Also for two years I was the photographer for calendars celebrating Sydney’s multicultural communities. The two calendars were entitled MULTICULTURAL SYDNEY. My work appeared in a group exhibition held at Sydney’s Town Hall pertaining to the diversity of life in South America to raise money for orphanages there. I have over one hundred photos stored in the New South Wales State Library archive. I had a solo exhibition held in 2007 entitled Ben’s Lens at the Sydney Jewish Museum which celebrated the vibrancy of the Sydney Jewish community. Some of these photos are on the Museum’s permanent display. I have exhibited internationally firstly at the Spruill Gallery in Atlanta Georgia, United States, and in an exhibition entitled Kosher and Co at the Jewish Museum in Berlin. Currently I am a regular contributor to J-Wire and this esteemed publication. To celebrate the opening of a permanent Photography Gallery, the State Library of New South Wales selected 400 shots from its archive of over 2,000,000 images to display in the new gallery. An image of mine was plucked out of the multi million photo archive to be part of the inaugural exhibition.