Jeremy Wikeley: 'I would always defend the notion of being able to write about a place called England'

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22d ago 19:36

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We've already welcomed Fríða Ísberg, Bronia Flett and PR Woods in this Spring series, and Susanna Clarke will be joining us next time. But now we're hearing from Jeremy Wikeley with his short story Kent's Oak.

According to Wikeley, his main character's disconnected connection with his neighbours on the estate is just how it felt when he was growing up in the suburbs of a small town.

"You were very familiar with a lot of places and a lot of things," he says, "and you were at home. But you didn't have many opportunities to express that with other people and therefore were you really at home?"

As someone who has "always felt very English and sort of not English," Wikeley explains, Englishness is "a big hobbyhorse of mine – what it is, how it feels".

There's an element of disconnection buried in the heart of Englishness, he continues. "Nature writing, which is tied up with Englishness, is often a response to the destruction of the countryside and the destruction of nature. And so the time element of it is always loaded with loss, but also with nostalgia."

But for Wikeley these losses are an inevitable part of being human.

"I don't have a problem with cutting down trees," he says, "which is maybe not what you were expecting from this story… as long as you're doing it for a reason."

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