From Carol Drinkwater, the beloved star of the English TV show. All Creatures Great And Small comes a heart-wrenching World War II romance about a French village that opened its arms as the Nazis closed in
Hi, I’m your host Jenny Wheeler. And Carol, our Binge Reading guest author today, is well known for her series of bestsellers about her life on an olive farm in Provence, made into a series of popular nonfiction books and a TV show called Carol Drinkwater’s Secret Provence.
But Carol also writes fiction and her latest novel An Act of Love is based on a true story that took place in a mountain village not far from where she lives. It’s a fascinating story.
Links to items mentioned in the show:All Creatures Great and Small TV show (2020 Version) https://www.imdb.com/title/tt10590066/
1978 Series https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_Creatures_Great_and_Small_(1978_TV_series)
Carol Drinkwater’s Olive Farm series:
http://www.caroldrinkwater.com/gallery/mediterranean_gallery.htm
http://www.caroldrinkwater.com/books/theolivefarm
Carol Drinkwater’s Secret Provence Tv series
(All different areas have different providers – search your location…)
https://www.channel5.com/show/a-year-in-provence-with-carol-drinkwater/
You Tube: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLmi4nFcUuHiBZSZXVzB79ghqqwgWm_kR_
Occupied and Free France in World War II
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vichy_France#
Golden Pennies: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0222566/
James Herriot penname – real name James Alf Wight https://www.jamesherriot.org/life-and-times/
Beyond Borders Film Festival:
https://filmfreeway.com/BeyondBorderInternationalFilmFestival
Companion Piece – Ali Smith: https://www.amazon.com/Companion-Piece-Novel-Ali-Smith/dp/0593316371
Seasonal Quartet: Spring and Winter, Ali Smith: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/40545817-spring
Oh William, Elizabeth Strout: https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/56294820
Where to find Carol Drinkwater Online
Website: http://www.caroldrinkwater.com/
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But now here’s Carol
Hello there. Carolyn. Welcome to the show. It’s great to have you with us.
Introducing author Carol DrinkwaterCarol Drinkwater: Oh, it’s an honor. Hello? Hello, New Zealand.
TV actress and best selling author Carol DrinkwaterJenny Wheeler: We should start by establishing our geographical location. As you’ve mentioned, I’m in New Zealand, and where are you for our listeners benefit?
Carol Drinkwater: At the moment, I’m in the south of France overlooking the Bay of Cannes.
Jenny Wheeler: Beautiful. Now that’s on your olive farm, is it?
Carol Drinkwater: That’s our olive farm. Indeed. Yes. We have two homes in France. One is in the north outside Paris, and the south is the olive farm.
Jenny Wheeler: Wonderful. You’ve had a fantastic career. You started out with a wonderful career in tv, including a starring role on a famous show of a few years ago now. All Creatures Great And Small, which I’m sure many of our listeners will still remember, and then you’ve transmuted yourself into, first of all, nonfiction and then fiction writing.
Now we’re going to focus a bit at the beginning of this chat on your latest book, which is called An Act of Love.
It’s a wonderful World War II story set in a tiny village in the French Alps during the Second World War. Tell us about the story and how you came across it.
Carol Drinkwater: Well, though the story is entirely fiction, the incidents are not, and this part of the Alps where the book is set.
It’s in fact about an hour inland of our olive farm. And I happened to be up there, oh, I don’t know, just reconnoitering around for looking for ideas and things.
And I came upon this village and there was the tiniest museum I’ve ever seen, which no longer exists, sadly. And in there, there were one or two… not exactly photographs, but there were just references to incidents that had happened in the Second World War.
A hideaway from Nazis in the AlpsAnd I dug a little deeper and found out that, in fact, this village, because this area was in the free zone of France — the Nazis came in and they took most of France, but they didn’t take this southern section down here.
And so Jews were down here, and those who thought that they would in danger from the Nazis came to live in this corner.
And then as the Nazis started to move into the Free Zone, it became a dangerous area for anybody who was a target for them, particularly Jews. And this one small village inland of Nice, about an hour’s bus ride inland from Nice, voted a hundred percent to take in refugees.
It was a village of about 300 people, just farming people and mountain people.
And within, oh, six months there was almost a thousand people there.
And all the other people, of course, were foreigners. They were Lithuanian speaking, Polish speaking.
They were Jews from all over Europe who were fleeing the Nazis and they were safe for almost a year in this village. I don’t want to give the details away, because that’s what the story is inspired by.
It is the most remarkable story of how completely different peoples came together and created for a short while during a war, an area and an environment of peace and acceptance and diversity.
And it so inspired me that I thought I must write a story. My story is basically about a Polish Jewish family, but particularly the 17-year-old daughter who is on the cusp of her life, the verge of her life.
She’s about to step out, and wants to go dancing and do all the things that young girls want to do for. Fall in love, et cetera.
Love in all its dimensions – personal and communalBut there she is caught up in a war zone situation. However, within this village, she finds certain areas where she’s welcome and her life begins to open up.
So that’s the basis of the story.
Jenny Wheeler: And it is about love in all its dimensions, as you’ve outlined. Her most remarkable communal love, but she also does meet up and have an attraction to a young doctor in the village.
But the act of love that the book refers to is not just a simple romantic love. We’re not going to give it away, but she makes quite a self-sacrificing act for the benefit of others.
I wondered if you could talk about those terms of love at the heart of the book. As I say, it is a wonderful romance, but it’s much more than a romance, isn’t it?
Carol Drinkwater: Well, I think the point is that yes, it is much more than a romance and an act of love is actually, yes, it is the act of love.
Yes, it is the act of her first experience of a physical relationship with a young man and a young man who is not Jewish, of course, who comes from a totally different background.
But more importantly over the time that she’s in this village, what she sees is the risks the local people are taking to hide and look after 500 completely unknown foreigners whose lives are in danger.
If they are caught, they will be murdered. And if the villagers are caught, they too will be murdered.
So these local people, these French people are putting their lives at risk the act that happens in the book, which is of course an accumulation of many acts. small gestures of love and acceptance build in the eyes of Sara, in the heart of Sara.
A young woman growing up in a warShe begins to see that actually, life is about giving, it is about opening yourself up to others and taking risks in order that we can all share the best of the world.
And in the light of that, she makes a gesture, which I’m not going say what it is.
Obviously she takes a step which is extraordinary. Absolutely extraordinary.
And there were young women who made similar gestures, similar steps not specifically Sarah’s story because I’ve made that one up,
But that becomes one of the most important parts of her growing process, of her maturity into womanhood, to understand that opening her arms to embrace, no matter what the risks are what really makes life worth living.
I’s a bit vague because I don’t want to give the story away.
Jenny Wheeler: This is not your first fiction that you’ve written, but before you began your fiction, you had a remarkable series of non-fiction books. We’ve already referred to your Olive Farm.
And the Olive Farm began as a rather personal love story of your own. Tell us a little bit about.
Carol Drinkwater: The whole genesis of the Olive Farm series, there’s about four or five books – well let me just go back before the Olive Farm series,
I wrote some fiction. I wrote a book for what I call young adults, which is the nine to 13 market called The Haunted School, which we made into a mini-series, shot it in Australia.
I worked quite a lot back then in Australia and visited New Zealand of course.
In a way that was the beginning of it all, in Australia. Before The Haunted School, I was shooting in Melbourne, a mini-series called Golden Pennies with actors that included Jason Donovan, who was a very young chap back then.
And I met the French producer of this mini-series, Golden Pennies, a man called Michel and he is now my husband.
On their first date, he asked her to marry himSo the story goes back as far as I met my husband in Sydney. After we’d been, shooting, he turned up to see the rushes and everything from Paris.
And on our very first evening for dinner, he asked me to marry him. It was a love story that began in the most extraordinary and unexpected circumstances.
I was cradling a broken heart at the time over someone that I’d loved on and off for donkey’s years, and he wouldn’t commit to me.
And I went off, I got this job in Australia hoping that I would begin to see life from another perspective and maybe start writing. And that’s where I met Michel.
And my heart was open and ready for a new relationship and off we went. It was four years before we got married. But that’s the beginning of this story.
And also to say that I wrote at that stage some fiction books. Then after I’d met Michel in Australia, though he asked me to marry him. I didn’t accept straight away.
In fact, it was four years before we got married, but we came back or he came back to France and I came back to England at the time.
To London and he said, come and visit me. I’m going to the Cannes Film
Festival. So I came down here and I’d been looking all over the world for what I described as my ‘house by the sea.’
I wanted a house that I could relax in, hide away from work, et cetera, when I wasn’t acting and maybe start writing, which is what I had as an ultimate goal.
And I’d looked all over the world. I’d looked a lot in Australia. I was looking around Melbourne and all that way and had found one or two places I liked and had thought of staying in Australia.
I was offered an Australian residency, so I was thinking of doing that and then, As I say, Michel stepped into my life and he said, come to Cannes.
While he was doing business during the Cannes Film Festival, I started looking for my house by the sea. And of course the French said, Bien sur, we have many houses by the sea.
And they said, how much have you to spend. And then they were rather sniffy when I gave my, paltry sum of money.
One estate agent took pity on us and brought us inland, so not quite on the sea, but I can see the sea from the windows as I talk to you now.
He said, ‘well, I know of somewhere.’ He, first of all, took us to somewhere, which is just one stone wall in a field, and. Michel came with me, even though we weren’t looking to buy at that stage together.
And then he said, well, I do know of an olive farm and vineyard.
I’m not representing it. It’s been squatted. It’s been empty for 10 years, and he brought us here.
There were no gates or anything so we could just come up through this winding jungle of land and ridiculously we both fell in love with it.
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100%;}.formkit-form[data-uid="d471e51619"][min-width~="600"] [data-style="minimal"]{padding:40px;}.formkit-form[data-uid="d471e51619"][min-width~="600"] .formkit-fields[data-stacked="false"]{margin-left:-5px;margin-right:-5px;}.formkit-form[data-uid="d471e51619"][min-width~="600"] .formkit-fields[data-stacked="false"] .formkit-field,.formkit-form[data-uid="d471e51619"][min-width~="600"] .formkit-fields[data-stacked="false"] .formkit-submit{margin:0 5px 15px 5px;}.formkit-form[data-uid="d471e51619"][min-width~="600"] .formkit-fields[data-stacked="false"] .formkit-field{-webkit-flex:100 1 auto;-ms-flex:100 1 auto;flex:100 1 auto;}.formkit-form[data-uid="d471e51619"][min-width~="600"] .formkit-fields[data-stacked="false"] .formkit-submit{-webkit-flex:1 1 auto;-ms-flex:1 1 auto;flex:1 1 auto;} A journey for peace around the Mediterranean
So that was the beginning of my personal story that has become The Olive Farm and indeed, the commitment to our relationship.
I fell in love with this house, this property. I fell in love with Michel, of course. first and foremost, Michel, then the property, and then the Mediterranean lifestyle.
And then as I began to understand and ask myself about the olive trees, I made a 17 month journey on my own round the Mediterranean, in search of the history of the olive tree.
I worked with Unesco. They invited me to help them create an olive route of peace around the Mediterranean, particularly in the Middle East.
Israel, Palestine, those kinds of countries. Turkey, Greece, the countries where there is conflict and where the olive tree is at the very heart of living.
Two of the books, The Olive Route and The Olive Tree are travel books.
They narrate my journey around the Mediterranean over 17 months and the other books are set here in Provence.
They’re all Mediterranean stories, my personal story and travel stories, but always told from my point of view. So that’s the six books in the series.
A rustic life with a leaking roof and no power Carol Drinkwater’s little piece of paradiseJenny Wheeler: Fantastic. And I was really struck, because it sounds very romantic, but I saw a reference, you said, for the first four years we slept on a mattress in the sitting room and cooked over an open fire. That sounds very rustic. How did you survive those years?
Carol Drinkwater: Well, to be fair, we weren’t living here full-time, it was because it really was in the beginning, there was no water, there was no electricity, there were no facilities at all.
And the place had a leak. It’s got a flat roof, a Mediterranean roof. Although we discovered a leak, there was no kitchen, et cetera, et cetera.
But we came here with Michel’s daughters from his first marriage, twin girls, and we had friends sometimes come to visit us.
We came, at Christmas and in the summer and things like that.
Obviously anyone that came to visit us stayed in hotels. They weren’t mad enough to sleep on mattresses on the floor with us, but we were totally in love.
We had no money. That’s not changed a lot, but we really wanted to do this and we spurred each other on.
And I think that’s one of the great things about why we complement each other. We are both very willing to take a risk, for example, at our place up north, my husband started an environmental film festival for an entire weekend in early June.
It’s coming up now and at first I thought, oh God, millions of people traipsing around the garden, but I’m on board with him now.
We put a screen up on the back of what I call our place up there, the mad old chateau. It isn’t a chateau, but it’s an old stone house. So you know, he’s on board for that.
So I support him and I think that’s one of the things that makes our relationship work is that, we are enthusiastic for the others most of the time.
Nearly 40 years and still going strong Carol and Michel at home – picture credit – Daily MailJenny Wheeler: Just to go back to that very first night. Was your breath rather taken away when he asked you to marry him after having known each other such a short time?
Carol Drinkwater: Not even 24 hours. I was completely blown away. We hadn’t even had our first course.
We were sitting at this little restaurant that doesn’t exist now down at Elizabeth Bay in Sydney.
And we hadn’t had any food, but the wine had arrived. I had a good slug of my chardonnay, and I moved straight along, pretended I didn’t hear.
But I saw him the next morning in the hotel at breakfast and he came over to my table and said “thank you so much for a lovely evening.” And I said, thank you too.
And he said, “but I think you didn’t answer my question.”
And I said, “which question was that?”
And he said, “Well, I asked you to marry me,” and I said, “well, I didn’t actually take you seriously.”
He said, “I tell you what, I will telephone you.”
And we’ve just celebrated our 35th wedding anniversary and in October, because that was in October. October 4th, it will be 39 years since we met.
We’ve had some very bad years, we split up for a while and like all marriages, we’ve had ups and downs.
But no, I didn’t take him seriously that night. I can see now that he meant it.
The challenge of organic olives Guests in the summer garden – Carol DrinkwaterJenny Wheeler: You’ve got some very old trees there, on the farm, as well as new ones that you’ve planted, haven’t you?
Carol Drinkwater: We have, some of the trees have been dated at several hundred years old. We’ve planted more trees.
Oh, well, it must be 20 years ago now that we, and we still plant an odd one here and there as we change the, layout of the land.
We’ve got about 300 and something trees, which might not sound a lot by New Zealand, Australian standards, but land is very precious down here and very expensive.
So, it’s quite a lot of trees. It’s a small holding, but nonetheless it’s a considerable small holding.
Jenny Wheeler: You’re making your own olive oil still, aren’t you?
Carol Drinkwater: We do, we are now organic. That’s been one of my big fights is to look after the environment and that was one of the things when I did my traveling around the Mediterranean for the olive route and the olive tree books was where I saw land being cared for and land being destroyed.
And it became something that was very clear for me about how we need to go forward to look after the planet.
And I’ve become quite a vocal speaker for anti pesticides, not putting chemicals on the land. So we have an organic olive farm here. There’s nothing goes on this land at all.
Every, plant that – I don’t like the word weeds, but everything that is not where we want it to be, is taken up by hand, which is, I can tell you as I get older, I curse myself sometimes for the position I’ve taken on this, but I believe it strongly.
We have lots of butterflies and pollinators and I can go outside, I can hear the whole land buzzing and moving.
A little piece of paradiseAnd, I feel proud for that. It’s only a little small plot, as I say, but you know, it’s 30,000 square meters. So, I’m proud of that this little piece of paradise is being cared for by someone who’s not trying to do it for money and yes, we do produce our own organic olive oil.
Jenny Wheeler: Do you have enough to sell. Do you have it on your website
Carol Drinkwater: No. People contact me and say, have you got any olive oil? And if I’ve got any over then I happily will sell it.
But it’s very little. it’s not a. business. That’s not my thing, I earn my living as an artist, as a writer, as an actress or whatever it is that I’m doing.
By the way, just to say to you the television series I did last year, Carol Drinkwater’s Secret Provence can be Seen in New Zealand. I’ve spoken to people who’ve seen it down there.
If I can find out how, I’ll send you an email for it. Okay. I’ll let you know.
Jenny Wheeler: That’s lovely.
We’ll put that in the show notes because I’m sure people would be interested.
Give us an idea about how much your time you’re spending writing, and how much you’re spending on TV and how your life works at the moment in terms of your main interests.
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