A.S. Byatt - A Curious Mind (1996)

When I first read AS Byatt's Booker Prize-winning novel 'Possession' I was amazed to find an important part of it took place in the familiär and much loved landscape of my childhood. Here were places I knew well on the rugged coast of East Yorkshire, and most particularly the seaside town of Filey, beautifully brought to new life as the romantic destination of a Victorian couple, indeed the locus of their relationship's consummation. It was both surprising, but also rather strange, as truthfully illicit sex and Filey had never before co-existed in my mind. It was just the little town where I grew up and my father had worked as a GP for many years. It was only later that I learned that it was also the resort to which Antonia Byatt and her family had often come from Sheffield for their annual summer holiday. Knowing this undoubtedly sowed the seed for this film which however took quite a few years to germinate, until finally being accepted as a Bookmark doc. But the thought of making a kind of 'home movie' in which I could revisit various locations I'd known as a child, and re-see them through the eyes of a writer I admired had remained an intruiging concept. And fortunately Antonia herself liked the idea too and it formed an immediate bond between us. Of course the film we made became very much more than that and developed into a wider and deeper writer's journey, in which Antonia visited other key locations, including her first school and family house in Sheffield, Malham Tarn Field Centre, a painter's studio, a science laboratory, her home in Putney and the London Library (which she loved) and the Quaker school in York (which she loathed). Everywhere we went and with whoever we met along the way Antonia freely opened up and reflected on many aspects of her life, ideas and curiosity as a writer, in ways that were compelling and at times very moving.