FiveBooks Interviews > 

Ann Widdecombe on Childhood Innocence

The MP and former government minister chooses five books about childhood innocence. She doesn’t like what she calls "cleverness" in authors - and is most moved by Kipling’s The Jungle Book

Let’s start with A History of Insects.

A History of Insects is about a girl of about eight or nine growing up in Pakistan in the days of Empire, getting very friendly with a Pakistani man who works in the household and treating him like a favourite uncle. She keeps a diary of events, but, because she doesn’t want anyone to read it, she writes ‘A History of Insects’ on the cover. She can’t understand the adult world about her, the racism that is endemic, and then, sure enough, a major thing goes wrong and the adults try to blame the Pakistani. She doesn’t understand this, she doesn’t understand the dynamics of infidelity that are going on among the adults, she doesn't understand anything at all. It’s all very puzzling to her. I think it’s a brilliantly controlled book because you never come out of the character of the child, who’s just looking on the adult world in bafflement. I think what all the books I’ve chosen have got in common is that the child at the centre of them simply doesn’t understand. You’ve got exactly the same sort of situation in The Go-Between.

Tell me about that book

 

 
The Go-Between is about a child, Leo Colston, who goes to stay with a family. He ends up being used by adults to run errands: he’s taking letters between a couple, Marianne and Ted, who are having an illicit affair, and he doesn’t know what’s going on. He’s just so innocent, and then he experiences the sheer shock of suddenly realising what’s been going on and the huge amount of adult recrimination that comes with it.
 
The big difference between these two books is that The Go Between has an adult perspective.
 
Yes. In A History of Insects it’s contemporaneous and in The Go-Between he’s looking back. But, although Leo Colston is relating it in retrospect, he’s also relating it as he saw it at the time. So yes, he’s got the knowledge now to understand what it was he was doing but he does take us into a world, and a very innocent world, at the end of the last century, where the children are quite benignly ignored. I think we all forget that air of bafflement from childhood: we remember loads of things about childhood – we all remember innocence. I think what we tend to forget is bafflement.
 
Do you think the charm of The Go-Between is in its bafflement or in its innocence?
 
I think it’s a mixture of both; I mean, bafflement is innocence: that state in which you simply haven’t a clue, and, of course, once it’s lost it’s lost for ever. Once you’ve understood what the real world is about, and what is going on in adult life, and that grownups aren’t gods, they’re actually human beings with the normal quota of faults and foibles … once you’ve got to that stage you can never ever go back. You could go back and play childish games or go back to childish pursuits, but you can never return to the state of innocence. I think that quite a few authors look back on that with nostalgia whether they realise it or not, almost wishing they could recreate innocence. I think L P Hartley never produced anything like as good as The Go-Between again.

Tell me about The Jungle Books.

 
The children in those first two books are left to their own devices. But when we talk about them being alone, they are alone only some of the time. Mowgli, the main character of The Jungle Books, of course, is alone period because he’s the manchild and the only one there.
 
It’s about a boy adopted by wolf cubs, living wild in the jungle.
 
Yes, and he has great adventures: we have the Bandar-log, and Kaa the snake who at one point almost swallows up Mowgli’s later protector, Bagheera the panther. But there is nobody else. He’s utterly alone, and he’s only got wolf cubs, but he doesn’t know it. I mean, he thinks he is just part of the jungle and there is that terrible moment in The Jungle Books where he realises how the wolves in general hate him and he just stands there crying, although by then he’s an older teenager, but it’s because he has never understood that he was different. There’s a whole world there in that scene. I don’t even know if Kipling realised it when he was writing it, but it’s the utter breaking of innocence, because he thought he was part of them, that he was loved by them, that he was one of them, and then suddenly has to realise that he’s completely different and he’s not one of them, and they don’t actually love him at all. Now, what a moment! What a moment! And then, of course, he goes off and explores mankind.
 
Mowgli is coming of age in that scene.
 
Yes, totally. It’s a shock moment. I think that Mowgli is very, very accepting of everything, but all the time there’s a basic stability there. Baloo the bear and Bagheera love him, the mother and father wolf love him, Shere Khan the Tiger is the enemy, there’s danger here and there’s danger there. He survives these various adventures but there is an underlying stability there and I don’t think that doors open and shut for him until there’s this tremendous wham! Right at the point where he suddenly realises that he’s not one of them and that they don’t all love him – I think that's a terrible moment.

Comments

Good choices? What's missing? Write your thoughts below

About Ann Widdecombe

An MP since 1987, Ann Widdecombe was Minister for Prisons under John Major from 1995 to 1997. Following the Conservative defeat she served as Shadow Health Secretary and Shadow Home Secretary under William Hague. In 2001 she retired from frontbench politics in order to express herself more freely on issues that mattered to her. Her first novel, The Clematis Tree, published in April 2000, became a bestseller. Since then she has written a further three novels. She is currently a weekly columnist for the Daily Express and is in the process of writing a prequel to An Act of Treachery.

Ann Widdecombe on Wikipedia
Ann Widdecombe's Homepage
Ann Widdecombe's articles on the Guardian.co.uk

Ann Widdecombe’s Recommendations

A History of Insects

by Yvonne Roberts

Buy

“A History of Insects is about a girl of about eight or nine growing up in Pakistan in the days of Empire, getting very friendly with a Pakistani man who works in the household and treating him like a favourite uncle. I think it’s a brilliantly controlled book because you never come out of the character of the child who’s just looking on the adult world in...”

The Go-Between

by L P Hartley

Buy

“The Go-Between is about a child, Leo Colston, who goes to stay with a family. He ends up being used by adults to run errands: he’s taking letters between a couple, Marianne and Ted, who are having an illicit affair, and he doesn’t know what’s going on – he's just so innocent, and then he experiences the sheer shock of suddenly realising what’s...”

The Jungle Books

by Rudyard Kipling

Buy

“ Mowgli has great adventures: we have the Bandar-log, and Kaa the snake who at one point almost swallows up Mowgli’s later protector, Bagheera the panther. But there is nobody else. He’s utterly alone, and he’s only got wolf cubs, but he doesn’t know it. ”

The Ghosts of Eden

by Andrew J H Sharp

Buy

“ It is a wonderful story following two children: one colonial, one native African. It’s just out – very new. I thought: yes, this is a pretty rare book; whoever wrote this has really got something. I really did enjoy it.”

Oliver Twist

by Charles Dickens

Buy

“ Audrey Penn says: I have always believed that people, no matter how bad they are, when they see a really good kid in trouble, they’re going to help   Ann Widdecombe says: Oliver’s innocence is not being protected. It’s the exact opposite, although he is innocent – nobody who wasn’t would have said ‘Can I have some more?’ in those circumstances. I think this is a...”
1 of 1

Books by Ann Widdecombe

Father Figure

by Ann Widdecombe

Buy

An Act of Treachery

by Ann Widdecombe

Buy

An Act of Peace

by Ann Widdecombe

Buy

The Clematis Tree

by Ann Widdecombe

Buy

1 of 1

Related Articles

  • Welcome To My Daughter's Life

    Emine Saner | Guardian

    New Film Camera by Bi0star A documentary-maker films his daughter’s teenage and childhood years. How does she cope with the intrusion? Does it affect the relationship between father and child? Illuminating.

  • How Childhood Has Evolved

    Melvyn Konner | Chronicle Review

    Young girl drawing by eugene Neo-Darwinian theory, coupled with advances in psychology, neuroscience, genetics and anthropology, contribute to deeper understanding of child development

  • Debate: Is Whitewashing Literature Erasing History?

    Hillary Kelly | TNR

    Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by marklarson Alan Gribben published a new edition of Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn replacing the work "nigger" with "slave". But isn't the memory of prejudice our most potent weapon against prejudice?

  • Hamlet (Facebook Edition)

    Sarah Schmelling | McSweeney's

    Hamlet by hartlandmartin Retelling of Shakespearean tragedy as if via a Facebook news feed ("Rosencrantz, Guildenstern, and Hamlet are now friends"). Inspired many attempts to do likewise with other literary classics

  • Lifetime Reading List

    Walter Russell Mead | American Interest

    Columns by sweet mustache Short list of great books from classical antiquity that have shaped our civilization. "Reading these books will make you a better reader of almost everything else that comes out of the western world"