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Bedside Table
Kirsty Wark
From Issue 11 ◊ Oct/Nov/Dec 2001
Reading at the moment
Just now I'm reading Rachel Seiffert's The Dark Room (Heineman) because I'm doing the Booker awards for Radio 4. By my bed in London there's a copy of Robert Louis Stevenson's Weir of Hermiston (Penguin Classics), his last novel, which is just a fragment because it was never completed. I've also been reading Peter Carey's book about Ned Kelly, the notorious Australian bushranger, which is in the form of a diary kept by Kelly for his daughter (The True History of the Kelly Gang, Faber and Faber). There's also a copy of Goodbye to All That that I dip into, and I've just read Margaret Atwood's The Blind Assassin.
Couldn’t put down
For Radio 4's Book at Bedtime I read Midwives by Chris Bohjalian, an American writer. It's the story of a respected midwife called Sibyl who's accused of murder after performing a caesarian section on one of the women she attends to. It's a mystery, set in small-town Vermont, and the author's captured so many things about being a midwife, and about the mother-daughter relationship. It's such a great book and it's quite a surprise that a man can write so well about women's experiences and really get into his character's heads. Oh yes, and another one I couldn't put down has to be Bonfire of the Vanities (Tom Wolfe, Picador).
Covered with dust
Somebody gave me a copy of A Man In Full (Bantam) by Tom Wolfe that I really wanted to get into, but I'm still struggling with it and have been missing great chunks out. It's a huge sprawling book and could do with losing a fair amount. What it needs is a good editor.
Secret indulgence
I don't really have any. Actually, oh yes, I love reading kid's books - some of the writing is the best you'll read. My children are now nine and ten years old - at the age for great books. Yes, I'm a Harry Potter fan, but Jacqueline Wilson's a favourite. The latest is The Cat Mummy, a bizarre story about the death of a child's cat (and the loss of her mother). The kid's doing an Egyptian project at school and mummifies it.
KIRSTY WARK joined Newsnight, the BBC's current affairs flagship, in 1993, which she anchors alongside Jeremy Paxman and Jeremy Vine. She began her BBC career at Radio Scotland in 1976, as a graduate researcher. In 1982, Kirsty joined BBC Television in Scotland as a director, producing a memorable series called The Campaign Trail during the 1983 General Election. Kirsty then went on to present Scottish television news and current affairs programmes, before joining BBC1's Breakfast Time in the late 1980s. She has also fronted One Foot in the Past, Scottish television's Upfront and the BBC's Rough Justice.
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THE TABLE
It's always a bit of a mess, there are a load of books on it. I've actually got two tables, one in my London flat, which is a modern mahogany thing, and one in Glasgow where my home and family are, which is a Shaker-style desk. The one at home's really messy because it's got all the kids' books on it. There's usually a couple of magazines as well. One thing that I always keep beside my bed, wherever I am, is a pen and paper so I can write thoughts that occur to me when I wake up in the night - nothing profound, just things like 'for God's sake, there's no milk,' or 'I've got to go to London tomorrow'. I've got a pile of books mounting at either end: I don't normally have several on the go - but I've been travelling such a lot recently and they end up in a pile in one place or the other. [Kirsty has recently been involved in breaking news coverage of the events in America and it was very kind of her to find a moment for this interview}.
THE METHOD
The joy of reading for me is that it's the best thing for travelling. I read mostly on the train or plane down from Glasgow, which I do about twice a week. And I need something to read with all the waiting at Heathrow. I don't go to bed with a book as it's usually late and I fall asleep. Sometimes I'll pick one up in the afternoon, but a real treat is if I'm in bed at nine o'clock - I'm lucky if that happens once a fortnight.
There have been a couple of books that have been so good I've stopped reading them five pages before the finish, then I'll pick them up a week later. If I find a book I like then I'll pass it around all my friends. Also - I'm resolutely not a corner turner - I always use bookmarks or whatever's to hand.
