Guest: Brigid Keenan
Today I'm delighted to welcome Brigid Keenan to the blog. As an expat writer it is always inspiring to hear from someone who has navigated living overseas and a writing career with admirable style and good humour, so it was great to catch up recently with Brigid and hear more about her latest book.
Brigid Keenan is an author and journalist. She has worked as an editor on Nova magazine, the Observer and the Sunday Times. She has published two fashion histories as well as Travels in Kashmir, Damascus: Hidden Treasures of the Old City, the bestselling Diplomatic Baggage, and, most recently, the companion memoir Packing Up. Brigid is a founding board member of the Palestine Festival of Literature. She has spent most of her life in far-flung diplomatic postings, but now lives with her husband in Pimlico and Somerset; they have two daughters and four grandchildren.
Q: life as a 'trailing spouse' is frequently challenging, but never dull. How did you find adapting to life as a diplomatic wife after leading such a glamorous life in London?
A: I found it very difficult: I had never not worked, I got my first job when I was 17 (I didn't go to university) and suddenly finding myself with nothing to do every day was a real challenge. Our first overseas posting was Brussels and the saving grace was having a small daughter - and a baby born there - but I still got depressed, and my husband took us all to Kashmir for a sabbatical and when we got home I started working on a book about Kashmir and did some free lance journalism and felt a lot better.
Q: in time honoured expat tradition although it hasn't been easy to buy books here, there's a roaring market for second hand - I found a well-read copy of 'Diplomatic Baggage' at the Embassy's school fete book stall, and devoured it in a couple of nights. There were so many 'me too', laugh out loud moments. Did you write, or keep a notebook all through your years in the FO? Or do you just have a wonderful memory for anecdotes?
A: I kept a diary - not a proper one in a book, but scraps of notes about funny things and curious incidents. My 'diary' was in a plastic bag and when I came to write Diplomatic Baggage I relied on it a lot. But there was lots where the writing had faded, and places where I hadn't written out the whole story but used short cuts to jokes ie I wrote down Small Green VIP with lots of exclamation marks meaning it must have been a funny story, but I have no idea what it was.. Diary writers should write down their stories as soon after the incident as possible, and in good ink and not take short cuts because you wont remember later what you meant.
Q: Your new book, 'Packing Up' picks up the story of your life in Kazakhstan. What do readers have to look forward to in the latest volume of your memoirs?
A: Absolutely! I think being able to laugh at oneself and the situations you find yourself in is key. If you take yourself too seriously you cant see the funny side of life, it just makes you upset. My husband helps with this, he has never taken his position as an EU Ambassador as status for himself personally, but status for the job - a job that has perks - all of which will disappear when you leave it. This is not to say that we don't take life seriously when we need to, but its essential to keep an open mind, to be prepared to meet and get on with all sorts of people and never ever get pompous or think you deserve your priveleges (help, how do you spell that?). I am very emotional - I cry a lot and laugh a lot. My husband says I am an emotional haemophiliac...but I think it helps you to empathise with people.
Q: We met over fifteen years ago at the gallery in Chelsea where I was working with the inimitable Dale Egee. You had just published your gorgeous 'Damascus: Hidden Treasures of the Old City'. It is now, sadly, a poignant and valuable record of a lost time, and I imagine lost palaces? What are your favourite memories from your travels?
A: My favourite memories are of exploring Syria - going out at weekends in our landrover armed with Ross Burns' wonderful guide to the country and trying to find remote and extraordinary sites. We loved the area round Bosra where every town had a Roman heart, and we loved the Dead Cities near Aleppo - an area that is a battle ground now. What is happening in Syria breaks out hearts, and the plight of the refugees is simply devastating.
Q: What's next for you - are you writing at the moment?
A. Yes, I plan to republish a book I did decades ago called The Women We Wanted to Look Like - it is a fashion book, but told through the the stylish women who launched fashions - from Christine Keeler to Princess Diana. I have just finished a memoir of my childhood in India - I must be one of the last daughters of the Raj - and my time as a fashion editor in the early Sixties. It is called Full Marks for Trying and is published by Bloomsbury in June. Fingers crossed people will like it!
Brigid Keenan is an author and journalist. She has worked as an editor on Nova magazine, the Observer and the Sunday Times. She has published two fashion histories as well as Travels in Kashmir, Damascus: Hidden Treasures of the Old City, the bestselling Diplomatic Baggage, and, most recently, the companion memoir Packing Up. Brigid is a founding board member of the Palestine Festival of Literature. She has spent most of her life in far-flung diplomatic postings, but now lives with her husband in Pimlico and Somerset; they have two daughters and four grandchildren.
Q: life as a 'trailing spouse' is frequently challenging, but never dull. How did you find adapting to life as a diplomatic wife after leading such a glamorous life in London?
A: I found it very difficult: I had never not worked, I got my first job when I was 17 (I didn't go to university) and suddenly finding myself with nothing to do every day was a real challenge. Our first overseas posting was Brussels and the saving grace was having a small daughter - and a baby born there - but I still got depressed, and my husband took us all to Kashmir for a sabbatical and when we got home I started working on a book about Kashmir and did some free lance journalism and felt a lot better.
Q: in time honoured expat tradition although it hasn't been easy to buy books here, there's a roaring market for second hand - I found a well-read copy of 'Diplomatic Baggage' at the Embassy's school fete book stall, and devoured it in a couple of nights. There were so many 'me too', laugh out loud moments. Did you write, or keep a notebook all through your years in the FO? Or do you just have a wonderful memory for anecdotes?
A: I kept a diary - not a proper one in a book, but scraps of notes about funny things and curious incidents. My 'diary' was in a plastic bag and when I came to write Diplomatic Baggage I relied on it a lot. But there was lots where the writing had faded, and places where I hadn't written out the whole story but used short cuts to jokes ie I wrote down Small Green VIP with lots of exclamation marks meaning it must have been a funny story, but I have no idea what it was.. Diary writers should write down their stories as soon after the incident as possible, and in good ink and not take short cuts because you wont remember later what you meant.
Q: Your new book, 'Packing Up' picks up the story of your life in Kazakhstan. What do readers have to look forward to in the latest volume of your memoirs?
A: This is not so much about travelling (though it has our last days in Kazakhstan and our posting in Azerbaijan) it is about the difficulties of coming home at the end of a career and retirement..... all of which have their funny side. And its about the arrival of grandchildren and all that goes with that.... And its about getting breast cancer and how I dealt with it (I was lucky). All this sounds rather gloomy but I find it funny in a different way to Dip Bag, and I get lots of messages from people saying they had laughed out loud - one person said they LIKED waking up in the night so she could go on reading the book!
Q: That sense of recognition - that someone has been through, laughed at and survived some of the more difficult moments as an expat is a huge inspiration and comfort. Are there any books by earlier 'trailing spouses' which you have read over the years that had a similar effect on you?
Q: That sense of recognition - that someone has been through, laughed at and survived some of the more difficult moments as an expat is a huge inspiration and comfort. Are there any books by earlier 'trailing spouses' which you have read over the years that had a similar effect on you?
A: Not really. I think my mother was a bit of an inspiration: she was an Indian army wife and spent her life trailing round Dad but she was always upbeat and managed to find interesting things to do - painting, drawing, making things. They never had any money but she was very resourceful when it came to decorating our temporary homes and she was always up for an adventure. She once came back to England from India by bus so that she could buy a quilted coat in Damascus on the way.. I think the humour came from both Mum and Dad, they laughed a lot. Life for a trailing spouses was much harder then - no internet, emails and so on, but they were tougher and had fewer expectations.
Q: Your writing has been compared to Nancy Mitford's wit, 'as skittish as a kitten with needle claws, as stricken as a deer in headlights, and as smart as a cage of monkeys' (The Times). The Mail also said you are 'the reincarnation of Norman Wisdom, Inspector Clouseau and Frank Spencer rolled into one'. Do you think the ability to laugh at oneself, and difficult times, is an important part of making a success of life overseas (or life in general)?
Q: Your writing has been compared to Nancy Mitford's wit, 'as skittish as a kitten with needle claws, as stricken as a deer in headlights, and as smart as a cage of monkeys' (The Times). The Mail also said you are 'the reincarnation of Norman Wisdom, Inspector Clouseau and Frank Spencer rolled into one'. Do you think the ability to laugh at oneself, and difficult times, is an important part of making a success of life overseas (or life in general)?
A: Absolutely! I think being able to laugh at oneself and the situations you find yourself in is key. If you take yourself too seriously you cant see the funny side of life, it just makes you upset. My husband helps with this, he has never taken his position as an EU Ambassador as status for himself personally, but status for the job - a job that has perks - all of which will disappear when you leave it. This is not to say that we don't take life seriously when we need to, but its essential to keep an open mind, to be prepared to meet and get on with all sorts of people and never ever get pompous or think you deserve your priveleges (help, how do you spell that?). I am very emotional - I cry a lot and laugh a lot. My husband says I am an emotional haemophiliac...but I think it helps you to empathise with people.
Q: We met over fifteen years ago at the gallery in Chelsea where I was working with the inimitable Dale Egee. You had just published your gorgeous 'Damascus: Hidden Treasures of the Old City'. It is now, sadly, a poignant and valuable record of a lost time, and I imagine lost palaces? What are your favourite memories from your travels?
A: My favourite memories are of exploring Syria - going out at weekends in our landrover armed with Ross Burns' wonderful guide to the country and trying to find remote and extraordinary sites. We loved the area round Bosra where every town had a Roman heart, and we loved the Dead Cities near Aleppo - an area that is a battle ground now. What is happening in Syria breaks out hearts, and the plight of the refugees is simply devastating.
Q: What's next for you - are you writing at the moment?
A. Yes, I plan to republish a book I did decades ago called The Women We Wanted to Look Like - it is a fashion book, but told through the the stylish women who launched fashions - from Christine Keeler to Princess Diana. I have just finished a memoir of my childhood in India - I must be one of the last daughters of the Raj - and my time as a fashion editor in the early Sixties. It is called Full Marks for Trying and is published by Bloomsbury in June. Fingers crossed people will like it!
