麻豆社

I took Fred鈥檚 life from the dramatic beginning of the diaries -听 in 1924, with a young family, he is evicted from his house for non-payment of rent 鈥� to the triumphant publication of his autobiography in 1940. The big advantage of the five part weekly slot, as I鈥檇 already discovered, is that you can cover a long stretch of time, the gap between the episodes allowing you to elide months or years. My difficulty was where to go for permission to dramatise the diaries. All I had, after thirty years, was an address 鈥� a grandson, Rod Roe. No postcode. No phone number. I decided to write an old fashioned letter, without high hopes. But, a week or two later, up popped an e-mail: 鈥楬ello, Stephen. Long time鈥︹�櫶� He apologised for the delay in replying but he鈥檇 been on holiday in the Canaries. Fred, his grandfather, we reflected, had never got any further than London.听听

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On a fine Sunday last Spring, with the commission agreed, I drove to Rod鈥檚 house to pick up the diaries: a near complete record of a working man鈥檚 life during the middle part of last century, by turns funny and bleak. What I realised this time was how Fred, in diarising, had developed that prose style which caused H.E. Bates to write, in his review of Fred鈥檚 autobiography: 鈥淢r. Kitchen writes as the grass grows and Brother to the Ox will take its place, for exact and simple beauty, with the best interpretations of the countryside.鈥� The rule of thumb for these radio dramatisations is 8 minutes drama to 6 minutes diary. I had no hesitation at all in drastically reversing these proportions. Fred鈥檚 writing needs little help from the dramatist.听

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