Today Year 7 had the wonderful opportunity to spend an hour with the fabulous Robin Stevens, author of the Murder Most Unladylike and Ministry of Unladylike Activities books, in a Guernsey Literary Festival Schools event at Les Beaucamps school, kindly sponsored by Rothschild & Co.
We loved the thrilling reading she gave us from the start of Murder Most Unladylike detailling the gruesome discovery of the body of the murdered Science teacher in the gymn. Watch out Mrs Wallace! But as well as being hugely entertaining Robin gave us lots to think about. I have never made so many notes in an author talk before! I've collected below a few a few of her words of wisdom to share with those who didn't make it.
Artificial Intelligence
Robin said that many people now feel their own ideas are not good enough and want to ask AI to generate ideas for them because they think it will do it better. But our stories are shaped by our own individual special history and character. People will want to read your stories because they are shaped by your unique lived experience. AI can't offer you that because it does not have a lived experience of its own. Your stories will be special because you are special, so embrace that.
Robin illustrated that with stories from her own childhood as a small child growing up in an Oxford College, learning all the special hiding places where she could hide from adults and see how they behaved when she wasn't around. She also told of her boarding school history at Cheltenham Ladies College, and of the books she loved such as the famous five (where the world divided neatly into goodies and baddies) and Agatha Christie (where things were much murkier and it felt like there were real mysteries to solve). This rich history, she said, had equipped her to write murder mystery stories about children for children, which didn't really exist at the time she started writing them.
Prejudice in the WW2 Europe
She then confronted some of our assumptions about WW2, asking us to guess the contexts and locations of photos of a prisoner a war camp and a group of fascists saluting their blackshirted leader. The camp was on the Isle of Man, where German, Austrian and Italian citizens who had been in the UK at the start if WW2 were interred for fear that they would support the Nazi regime - even if they had fled from it. The blackshirts were the Britsh Union of Fascists, saluting Oswald Mosely. Robin's point was that real life (unlike the famous five) isn't black and white. It is easy to assume all the Fascists were on the continent and that they had a monopoly on unjust interrment - but Robin showed us that that wasn't true. Prejudice doesn't follow national boundaries. Her Ministry of Unladylike Activities books are set in this messy world, with the characters needing to navigate the uncertainties, nuances and challenges of the time.
Becoming a writer
Robin identifies the moment she became a writer at the age of six when she ahared a story she had written with her mother. It wasn't a good story - but it was the start of her journey. Her wise words for anyone wanting to follow in her footsteps were that to be a writer you have to write a lot. It doesn't have to be perfect, just keep writing and the more you write the better you will get. It's all about putting in the time - and having fun!
And Robin certainly seemed like she was having as much fun as we were, as she coached us through how to solve cryptic crosswords, and even wrote a brand new murder mystery story with us, as we voted on the setting, the crime, the victim, the clues and the suspects.
Key takeaways
I would wholeheartedly recommend Robin's books to anyone (and the poll she took at the start suggested that at least 80% of us love a good mystery!). I'm looking forward to reading her new Ministry of Unladylike Activities series when it arrives in the Library later this week. I am expecting to learn a great deal of fascinating history through her carefully crafted characters - and have a lot of fun along the way!
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