It formed part of a programme in a series called Bridgebuilders. This edition looked at the book trade in wartime and, as well as the novelist Wilkins, a bookseller and a publisher appeared.
A transcript of the programme was printed in the 5 August 1943 issue of The Bookseller. Wilkins was interviewed by Nicholas Stuart.
Stuart: Before you can sell your book or publish it, it's got to be written. So to give us the low-down on that side of the question, here is Vaughan Wilkins, author, among other publications of the best-selling novel And so Victoria. Now, Mr. Wilkins, just you tell us all about writing books in war-time.
Vaughan Wilkins: Writing is a difficult business at the best of times. Don’t you believe it if anyone says otherwise. When I was a newspaper editor, I thought it was easy. Now I know better. And it is far harder in war-time Britain.
Stuart: Well, I guess that’s quite understandable.
Wilkins: There are two reasons. One physical, and the other psychological.
Stuart: Perhaps you’d care to expand that statement, Mr. Wilkins.
Wilkins: Like the publisher and the bookseller, the author suffers from labour shortage - his own labour. In peace-time, if that happens, it is usually his own fault - his own laziness. But to-day he is not the master of his own labour. He can’t do or not do, what he chooses, or does not choose. If an author is of military age and fit he may be called up. Even if he isn’t, there are still lots of duties which he owes to his country, civil and home defence duties of all sorts. Difficult to write books, you know, when you’re soldiering or sailoring, or even Home Guarding. Take my own case. My publishers in London and in New York - that means you, Lathom - will tell you that I have been behind time - horribly behind time - on those books I contracted to write for them.
Stuart: What are your particular difficulties?
Wilkins: When war broke out, I was struggling to write a book with six children under twelve years old evacuated from London billeted in my house. They were fine brave children, as good as gold. But to have one’s paternal responsibilities suddenly increased by half a dozen, doesn’t speed up book production.
Stuart: No, I'll bet it doesn’t.
Wilkins: Well, then, I was also billeting officer for my parish. Which meant that I was at the beck and call of some 70 or 80 evacuees and their hosts. A cross between a quartermaster-sergeant and a fairy godmother. Another hold-up there! Then the invasion threat came, and with it the formation of the Home Guard as it is now called. Well, we dug trenches. We made rifle pits. We flung together against the invader barricades of farm carts and barbed wire. We learned to throw bombs. We keep watch. Doing that doesn’t help getting a book written. In the mere matter of time for writing.
Stuart: That must be so indeed. But you mentioned psychological reasons, Mr. Wilkins ?
Wilkins: Many people read books just to escape for a little from the present. There can be no reason why they shouldn’t. But all they’ve got to do is to open the book and read it. It’s a very different matter for the author: He’s got to sit down and write that book of escape in cold blood. He’s got to withdraw himself from the present, in which Britain's fate, and the fate of humanity, are in the balance. And when it comes to war books. The tremendousness of the issue, the tragedy and the glory and the speed of the drama are so vast that the imagination is overwhelmed. Here in Britain one sees made manifest the actuality of our new brotherhood: the truth that Britain and America are, in the words of the Atlantic Charter, "met together". I have come to London to find the streets thronged with Americans - our Allies, more than that, our brothers. No, one doesn't have to search for inspiration now, the problem is dealing with it.
Stuart: And that bridgebuilders was the voice of the author. You may like to know that Vaughan Wilkins' new book, Being Met Together, is appearing in your country very soon.
It was when a friend and I noticed that every secondhand bookshop in the country had a copy of the World Books of edition of Fanfare for a Witch, and I mean that literally, that I started collecting him, almost as a joke.
But I do remember enjoying his first book, And So - Victoria, when it was serialised for Book at Bedtime on Radio 4 in 1976.
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