– and I love that there’s no false modesty here, it suits her character, it suits her journalistic style, it suits her professionalism – ‘it might be that I write them better. Because if you’re launching an attack you have to be much more careful – I’m thinking about the libel lawyers the whole time. If I’m saying someone’s vain I can’t just say I got the impression they were vain, I’ve got to actually give some evidence for why I thought that.’ What she can’t do much with, she confides, is ‘somebody who’s just sort of nice and articulate who I might meet at a dinner party. I mean, I like those people, but they’re not much use as subjects.’ Or, as she writes in her introduction to Demon Barber, the 1998 collection of her interviews, ‘be as rude, difficult, vain, self-obsessed as you like, but please please don’t be boring.’

Barber’s interviews are anything but boring:

having done her research, she clicks on the tape recorder, sits back and generously gives ’em enough rope to hang themselves with. Some do (Irons, Margaret, Duchess of Argyll, John Aspinall, Jeffrey Archer, Peter Bogdanovich, Delia Smith, Gordon Ramsay); others mesmerise her – and therefore the reader – in a good way (David Hockney, Julian Clary, Neil Tennant, Agyness Deyn, Polly Stenham, Goldie). But Barber’s never smarmy: she’s got a knack for getting people to talk…and talk…and talk. As a journalist, you learn that interesting information comes out when you allow people to talk, and Barber is there, poised to catch it with humour and a pinch or three of salt. And though she places herself squarely in the interview scene – we never forget that it is Lynn Barber there, asking the questions, conducting the conversation, bringing a certain frisson to the proceedings – she doesn’t monopolise things, and she’s unafraid to show the limitations of what you can learn about someone in an hour, while still passing an enjoyable time with them and learning something about them.

Barber’s never been a big time-waster. (Once, fearful that Julie Andrews was going to utilise precious interview time asking about Barber’s children, she simply denied having any, thus, as she reports in 1991’s Mostly Men, ‘abolishing two daughters without even thinking about it.’) Fresh out of Oxford, the young Barber went to work, sharpening her writing teeth at Penthouse magazine (they offered her £16 a week, £2 more than Vogue) as its proofreader, stylist, Forum editor, literary editor (and, as Penthouse branched into America, the sometimes-smuggler-of-artwork to the printers). In a stroke of writer’s luck, her editor, Harry Fieldhouse was a mentor and a half: ‘Harry was vital really,’ says Barber. ‘What

I had was a school-girly fluency: I could write ten-page letters and ten-page diary entries; I never had any constipation about writing. On the other hand,’ – she chuckles – ‘it was all sort of babble babble babble!’ Fieldhouse took the young writer in hand: ‘We’re writing for men,’ he said to her. ‘Men don’t waffle.’ ‘He took this delight in showing me that, “You don’t need that sentence, you don’t need that adjective, you don’t need that qualifier, you don’t need that paragraph.” He would slash away at all that stuff. And that is now how I write: I let myself babble because I like that sort of freedom and freshness – I just try and get down everything that I can remember – and then I structure it by cutting and organising it.’ She considers her style quite masculine – ‘trim and lean and tight and not touchy-feely – but with a sort of femi

nine observation or sensibility.’

The inspirations kept coming. As Penthouse expanded its empire, Barber’s appreciation of interviews was revolutionised by magazines like Esquire, Rolling Stone, The New Yorker – and the meaty, substantive profiles that were at the forefront of American New Journalism: ‘In Andy Warhol’s Interview,’ she recalls enthusiastically ‘they just transcribed the entire tape so that half the conversation was “I like your shoes. Where did you get them?” and “Did you go to Bianca’s last night? Who was there?” Just chat chat chat! I thought it captured a really good feel of the period and of the characters.’ These interviews, she found, offered a certain level of immersion in the interviewee’s world that lent the finished product an air of familiarity, of equality. It was an interesting stance, quite different to what she was used to. ‘I realised that an interview doesn’t have to be so rigid,’ she says. ‘At the time, here, it was terrible, really. You had to write in the third person and you didn’t refer to yourself at all, so inevitably the effect of that was to give the impression of omniscience. So, you’d say, “He likes to drive down the Californian coast,” as if you knew everything about this person, which I think is quite dishonest if all you’ve done is read the press cuttings. What I try to capture is the feeling of meeting somebody and saying, “I spent an hour with Robert Redford: this is what it was like.” You have to write it as an encounter because otherwise who are they talking to? It’s just about trying to convey the feeling of that transaction between two people. That, to me, is justified. And when people say I’m very hostile or bitchy’ – is that a tiny eye roll I see before me? – ‘all I’m really saying is that I met Marianne Faithfull and she was just incredibly rude and unpleasant in the time that she was with me. I’m

not saying that she’s always rude and unpleasant – I mean, that might well be the case – but I’m not saying that.’

She left Penthouse in 1974 to start her family with husband David. As first Rosie, then Theo appeared, the stay-at-home mum indulged her love of Victorian nature books by writing the well-received Heyday of Natural History. ‘Never again!’ she vows now about the five-year project that became ‘a great chunk of academic work and took the fun out of those books for me.’ Publishers were clamouring for a book on Victorian anthropologists but ‘no way was I going to touch that with a barge pole!’

Then, her old mentor Harry Fieldhouse came calling: would she like to interview ethologist Konrad Lorenz for the Telegraph? The assignment was a revelation: ‘Suddenly I’m flown to Vienna, put up at a nice hotel and sent to interview this really fascinating, multi-cultured man,’ she says excitedly. ‘I mean, he was talking about PG Wodehouse and things; he wasn’t just talking about science. He had an amazing train set and all sorts of lovely automata and good paintings – it was a treat to meet him. And to be paid for it. And to be sent to Vienna. I thought, “This is the life.”’

Thus was Barber hooked. Work at the Sunday Express followed, again thanks to Fieldhouse, and her entrée into Fleet Street was complete. Meanwhile, her appreciation of feature interviews deepened: ‘I used to do these back-of-thebook interviews for the Express, ones made just of direct quotes. So I’d go off and interview, say, Barry Humphries, and when I’d get back to the office everybody would say, “What was he like?” and I’d say, “Well, he was half an hour late for a start, and then he washed his hands about four times.” And I realised that all the interesting stuff wasn’t going into the article. So when I got to the point where I could write all that – the number of times they cancelled the interview and blah blah – I seized it, because I thought, “That’s what you normally don’t get told.”’ PostIndy there were stints with The Sunday Times and Vanity Fair. She settled at The Observer in 1996 and has been there ever since.

Q: And what, for her, marks a successful interview? A: An interaction that’s held her interest. ‘It’s useful to raise the energy level,’ she says. ‘If someone’s telling the same anecdotes that they’re happy talking about, you’ve got to somehow give it a boost.’ That’s the point at which she ‘might interrupt to ask a rude question, make them realise they’ve got to try a bit.’

Before interviewing a writer, she’ll read as much of their work as possible. (When I meet her, she’s worried that a looming postal strike will prevent her from receiving a packet of Rachel Cusk books, key to an already-scheduled interview. As it turned out, she had more to worry about from a bout of swine flu, incubat-

‘Actually, I’d say that the nice interviews outnumber the nasty ones….’

14 | Mslexia.co.uk | Oct / Nov /Dec 09 ing as we spoke). Prepping for actors, though, is a different kettle of fish: ‘One of the reasons I’m reluctant to do actors is because I never go to the theatre. I hate theatre: you’d actually have to pay me to go. It’s just that thing of being stuck in a seat while people shout at you. So I do feel a bit ill-equipped to do theatre actors; there’s no way of retrieving their performance. If they’ve done film, I can go to the cinema or watch the DVDs.’ (Given a free evening, though, she prefers to spend it reading over anything else).

She insists on doing her own transcribing. ‘Everyone always tells me it’s a waste of time, but I always notice things that I hadn’t noticed at the time. I was just reading this interview’ – she grabs a weekend magazine – ‘with the actress Robin Wright Penn and it said that when the writer played the tape back he noticed that anytime he mentioned her husband Sean Penn, there was a little sort of, you know, a snort. Often, when you play an interview back you notice, “Ooh, crikey! They skidded off that subject very quickly!” It gives you clues.’

She transcribes, prints it out, underlines the bits she’s going to use, cuts the bits she won’t. Then…‘I’ve always been bad at construction,’ Barber admits. ‘I can usually do the beginning quite well, but I’m very bad at an end. So I look for a quote or something that I hope will end the interview – then I can stop worrying about it. I must say, when I first started, you literally had to cut and paste; it was a real messy way to work. Being so bad at construction, it’s easier for me now – I can just think, “Would that paragraph

be better there?” and try it out. I like that.’ She grins broadly. ‘I like tinkering on the page.’

A morning writer, she goes over her work in the afternoon. ‘Sometimes, I find if I have a glass of wine in the evening, I think, “That’s what I should have said!” There’s some fluency that comes; some bit that’s been sort of clogged and boring suddenly takes off a bit. So I will scribble that down – sometimes very drunkenly – and then see how it looks in the morning.’

That Lorenz interview remains her favourite, along with a day in Paris with Salvador Dalí that turned into a week in Paris – as part of his posse. ‘That was hugely fun!’ Barber recalls. ‘He kept saying, “Oh! I do not want to talk today – you come and sit by me.” It was just endless parties, one after the other – I was just part of his retinue: “Oh, that is my English interviewer,” he would wave at me. It was this incredible thing: all sorts of weird people turned up. I kept saying, “But I must ask you some questions!” And he just said, “Oh no! You don’t need to do that!” She’s laughing. ‘I did get some bits and pieces, but it wasn’t really a proper interview. But it was a good account of what Dalí’s scene was like.’

She was very moved and impressed by Rudolph Nureyev, and enjoyed a drunken night in Dublin with Shane MacGowan. ‘That was quite, quite interesting….But I loved them all, really,’ she says in a burst of affection. Then Demon Barber smiles. ‘Well, not the politicians,’ she says. ‘They’re very boring.’

My first memory… ‘is of being held up to the window of my grandparents’ cottage to see a bus going by.’

My first writing… ‘My first writing – apart from the usual cat, dog, stuff – was probably a description of my dog Zulu.’

Thanks to… ‘My late husband, my daughters, my publishers, my employers and the many friends I am so grateful to have.’

The first book that affected me… ‘The first book that affected me was Black Beauty. I found it so harrowing I resolved never to read a book again – though luckily I did.’

LYNN BARBER was born in Bagshot in 1944. The film version of An Education – screenplay by Nick Hornby – is out this autumn.

› › › › › ›

100 ways to write a book: *43 The Barber method

›› Read Lillian Ross’ interview with Ernest Hem

ingway: I hugely esteem her interview. It’s this succession of vignettes where he’s doing all those swaggering macho-y things – going to a gun shop, going to a tailor’s – and she’s just slightly poking fun at him. But you also come away with a sense of great sensitivity to his writing. ›› Don’t diminish the reader – they are your

ultimate responsibility. ›› You must possess real nosiness. You have to

really be curious about people, and not bored. ›› Don’t let your ego get in the way. You can’t do

your job if you start thinking, ‘I’ve had a more interesting life than she has.’ You can’t do your job if you think you’re more important than the person you’re talking to. ›› Go in with a list of questions, but put them

aside when it’s time to listen. ›› Listen.

›› Immediately after the interview, write down a

series of notes about anything that struck you. ›› You have to have a fearlessness about asking

questions. Some journalists and students are embarrassed to ask questions, but if you don’t ask questions, you’ll never get the answers. ›› If you see an opportunity for something that’s

got a bit more emotional reality – be it a sort of ding dong, a hostile exchange or a very warm and friendly exchange – follow through with it. Go for the real emotion. ›› Don’t go in with a pre-assumed angle: I get

cross with people who say, ‘Well, what’s your angle on Jordan?’ ›› Tell people right at the beginning, ‘Some of

my questions will be very intrusive and some will be very blunt but there’s no compulsion to answer them and I won’t be hurt if you don’t – just shake your head.’ ›› You can’t be too embarrassable if you want to

be a good journalist. ›› Good, solid prep work is essential, if only to

save precious time so you don’t ask questions or go over material that’s already out there. Use cuttings, reliable online sources, books… During the interview, time is of the essence. ›› I don’t like slimy interviewers who just want to

be best friends with Meryl Streep or something. ›› Take two weeks for an interview: two days

to prep, then the interview, then ten days to write. The longer you have to write something, the better it is. ›› Work in the mornings; lunch with friends. ›› Aim for: the longest answer from the shortest

question. ›› Transcribe your own tapes. It gives you a

chance to mull over the content. ›› When you’ve worked all day, take a step back

and relax. Allow things to pop into your head.