Much-awaited non-fiction title to be published this Friday - - New Zealand interest will be intense. The Bookman interviews The Biographer.

Teenage schoolgirls Juliet Hulme and Pauline Parker were convicted of murder in 1954 in a case that caused a sensation in New Zealand and around the world.
After spending five and a half years in prison Juliet Hulme left New Zealand changed her name and disappeared never to be heard of again.
Then in 1994 all was changed with the release of Peter Jackson's movie, Heavenly Creatures. With interest in the movie rekindled a journalist managed to track down Juliet Hulme who was living under the name of Anne Perry and who had become an international best-selling author.

This Friday, 27 July, Harper Collins will publish "The Search for Anne Perry" by New Zealand biographer Joanne Drayton .
In anticipation of publication this Friday I talked to author/biographer Joanne Drayton over the weekend. This is part one of a two part interview.

     Bookman Beattie - 

     The late, great NZ biographer Michael King told me on a number of occasions that biography was the most difficult and most expensive form of non-fiction to write because of the enormous amount of research that was required and the travel that was required to carry out that research. That must have been especially true in this case where you are NZ-based and your subject was in the UK, and had been there for many years which meant that not only she but most of the other main players in the story were overseas? How did you manage to fund your travel and research for this latest title, which I note is your fifth biography?

  Joanne Drayton -

 Michael King was absolutely on the money with his comments regarding biography. It is a hugely expensive enterprise. Biography, more than anything else I think, draws you to people, places and events – to interview sources and subjects and to experience the worlds, contexts and to an extent even vicariously the moments that make up a biography. Perhaps the tired but still apt analogy of the biographer as detective helps explain the necessity to piece together the story of a life, wherever that life takes you.

Anne Perry’s life took me many places in New Zealand, then around the world. I interviewed Anne and her friends and colleagues in London, Portmahomack (Scotland), Paris and New York. I knew the biography would be costly, so I applied to CLL, to the History grants, and numerous other academic and literary residencies and fellowships, with no luck. Without the support of Unitec (my employer) the venture would have been impossible. Over the years, Unitec has supported my research for 4 of my 5 biographies. I have received Creative New Zealand money, a History grant, and a National Library Fellowship in 2007, but much of my funding has come from the Polytechnic system, and even more of it – like Michael King – has come from my own pocket. It was as much a matter of grief for him, as it is for me.

2    BB -     You have clearly read many of the 50+ titles written by Anne Perry and in the early part of the book you deal extensively with her relationships with her various agents and editors in the early part of her writing career as the books are shaped and rewritten long before she is the best-selling author she was to become? I am sure that many publishers, agents, booksellers and others in the book world are going to find this part of your story most fascinating even though you deal with it before moving to the more sensational part of her life.

       JD -  Yes, I have to say I found Anne Perry’s publishing life every bit as fascinating as any other aspect of it – even the most sensational. It is a story of determination, on her part, but also of great flair and strategizing on the part of others. The London literary agency MBA launched her career after years of spectacular failures and manuscript turndowns. But it was her agents, Meg Davis and Don Maass that brilliantly built it. Anne Perry has an amazing talent and an incredible will to write and communicate her remarkable stories, but without the in-put of her agents, and her publishers (Ballantine of Random House), and the support of the book world – especially after her identity as Juliet Hulme was revealed – she would not be the best-selling author she is today. It is an inspiring story, not so much of genius, but of people working together to one end. It begs the question, whether in today’s publishing environment this would even be possible.

3    BB -   Can you tell us with a book like this where you actually start?

 I     JD - I began reading Anne’s books. I have read almost all of them, from the beginning to the end. I never skim. I read them, not as if I were a biographer collecting glimpses of my subject through the text, but as a crime detective fiction aficionado. Of course, I do try to capture anything that tells me something about their creator, but the key experience is one of reading rather than collecting. At the same time, I continued to research Anne’s life, which for me was not as removed from my own as it may seem. My mother was at Christchurch Girls’ High School (CGHS) with Juliet Hulme and Pauline Parker, I was brought up and educated in Christchurch, and in the 1990’s was a relief teacher at CGHS when they discussed whether they would lend the school uniforms for a film being made on the Parker-Hulme murder. And I was in the front row of a Christchurch picture theatre, when a diffident rather scruffily dressed man (about my own age) introduced his new movie Heavenly Creatures. The early research for this book is so embedded in my life, it is hard to know exactly when it began, or will end.

       BB -  Of course Anne Perry is a famously private person. How was it then that you were able to interview her so extensively and get what seems to be unparalleled access to her friends, relatives and colleagues.

JD -Why me? You know I’ve asked myself that question many times over. I can only give you a speculative answer. I was determined to tell this story – but then others have been just as determined. I felt I was the right person to tell it, and all I needed to do was communicate that to Anne. Getting to Anne was another matter. It was something of a gauntlet of agents and publishers. My first two responses from them were negative. I gave up the idea for a while then came to it again on a long-haul flight after making a documentary on Ngaio Marsh in London. I decided maybe I didn’t need their permission after all. Perhaps I could go ahead and put a proposal into HarperCollins NZ. I did this – and they hesitated – but it was ultimately accepted after being staunchly championed by editor Kate Stone
Initially I was thrilled to get a contact, but then the full force of the ethical dilemma struck me. What right did I have to write a biography about a living person without their participation? I agonized over it. My partner recommended I approach Anne’s London agent again. I did so not expecting to make any progress. Meg Davis asked me to send the proposal I had accepted by HarperCollins NZ and ultimately I was invited to meet Anne in London in July 2010
We met and there was the right kind of vibe. It’s hard to explain, but trust is a huge factor. The subject has to trust that you will bring intelligence and sensitivity to the situation and you have to trust that they will be honest and open enough to make the project worthwhile. In the wash-up, I think my sense of humour helped, my scruples definitely did, and my ability to be fair, to put assumption and the given point of view aside and find my own path was probably a huge factor, too – I think all these things helped make me the right person from Anne’s point of view. But it was still an unfold journey taken in good faith for both of us.

BB -  Your four previous biographies were written about women who were no longer alive – Edith Collier, Rhona Haszard, Frances Hodgkins and Ngaio Marsh – how different then is it writing about someone who is still alive?

JD -This is the perfect point at which to discuss the question about the difference between dealing with a living and a dead subject. There are some principal over-laps. Michael King was a guide for me in his thinking. He wrote about telling the ‘compassionate truth’ in biography, which he described as, ‘working from the record and following evidence to whatever conclusions it indicates; but having at the same time regard for the sensibilities of living people, including the biographee.’ I believe subjects deserve this degree of consideration, whether they are alive or dead
With a living person you have a much more immediate and direct dialogue. This makes the project more enjoyable if you are a people person like me, but also more problematic if you don’t manage to capture them accurately. Your biography and your subject when they are alive exist in the same world and comparisons can be made. Your subject becomes the litmus paper of your writing. I always felt with any of my subjects that I should be able to sit in the same room with them with no recriminations. Not that you’d soft-soaped them, but that you’d been open-minded and thoughtful and never plugged any gap with unfounded speculation. I feel able to do that with all my subjects living and dead and that is a point of pride for me.

Part two of my interview with Joanne Drayton will appear in the next few days.


The Search for Anne Perry
Joanne Drayton
Harper Collins - $44.99