William Trevor
William Trevor, who , aged 88, was widely regarded as one of the greatest contemporary writers of short stories in the English language. Alongside a collection of archive interviews, 大象传媒 Radio 4 brings you another chance to listen to his acclaimed 2007 short story collection Cheating at Canasta.
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William Trevor reads five tales from his 2007 collection of stories, published the year before the author turned 80. Folie a Deux is about a chance meeting in Paris. Cheating at Canasta tells a story of eavesdropping in Venice. Old Flame is about a haunted marriage. The Children concerns plans for remarriage and The Dressmaker's Child is about a scheme to dupe a gullible young couple.
From the archive
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Trevor is Roy Plomley's castaway in August 1980. Clarinet Quintet In B Minor by Brahms is his favourite music track, his book is Lives of the Saints by Alban Butler, and grapevines are his luxury item.
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John Tusa, then managing director of the Barbican, talks about the creative process with leading figures in the arts. Trevor appears on this edition of his Radio 3 series in July 2005.
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James Naughtie and a group of readers talk to Trevor about his 1996 short story collection After Rain. Trevor also reads from the book in a recording at Dr Johnson's House in the City of London.
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Children's writer Eleanor Updale joins Harriett Gilbert on Radio 4 in 2012 to discuss the books she loves. Updale chooses Trevor's "deceptively simple, poignant novel" Love and Summer.
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Trevor reflects on his long career in conversation with Mark Lawson in 2009. He remembers Ireland, discusses the future of literature and reveals why preachers from Daventry are indebted to him.
About the Author
William Trevor was an author of contradictions. He lived in England for almost his entire adult life, but was regarded as one of the elder statesmen of the Irish literary world.
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Although a writer of great eminence, he began his career as a sculptor under the name of Trevor Cox. Born in County Cork in 1928, his father’s work took the family throughout Ireland. The young William attended no less than 13 different schools. After graduating from Trinity College Dublin and abandoning his practice as a sculptor, he moved to England to work as a copywriter.
The advertising agency where Trevor worked proved a fecund environment in which to develop his writing style. He later observed, “to write any advertisement you’ve got to be brief… I did learn something about writing in short and I began to write short stories, all of them on the firm’s time.” Here he became friends with poets Peter Porter and Edward Lucie-Smith, also at the agency.
Trevor's work was often compared with Somerset Maugham and Anton Chekhov and much of it has been adapted into memorable films and TV drama. His stories explore themes of loneliness, alienation and the plight of elderly and those who are doomed because of their inability to overturn their own actions or the circumstances in which they find themselves.
As John Tusa has observed, many critics forget that Trevor was often a very funny writer with a capacity for mordant observation equal to any of his contemporaries, and what some have described as his ‘formal impersonal style’ fails to appreciate the latent passions, caprices and inner turmoil readers encounter bubbling under the surface in so many of his characters.
During his adolescence Trevor felt great ambiguity about becoming a writer and pulled in many different directions. Speaking of his innate love of the written word he said: “I was aware of that long before I was a sculptor. I started off as a writer as a child.” At school Trevor was determined to become a journalist and regretted his decision to study history at university.
During his long career he wrote several novels and hundreds of short stories. Critical success came in 1964 with his second novel The Old Boys which won the Hawthornden Prize for Literature. He won the Whitbread Prize three times and was nominated five times for the Booker Prize. His 2009 novel Love and Summer was also shortlisted for the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award.
Although the success of The Old Boys gave Trevor confidence to write full time, his greatest connection was always to the short story form: “I really am a short story writer who writes the occasional novel, not the other way round.”
Simon Richardson, 大象传媒 Readings Unit
