Diana Athill - Myra Hindley (66/77)

To listen to more of Diana Athill’s stories, go to the playlist: • Diana Athill (Writer)
Diana Athill (1917-2019) was a British literary editor whose publishing career began when she helped André Deutsch establish his company. Following the publication of her memoirs, she came to be hailed as an author in her own right. [Listener: Christopher Sykes; date reorded: 2008]
TRANSCRIPT: Myra Hindley came into my life because… now how was it? The firm was approached by David Astor. David Astor rang up André and said… you know, he was very interested in her and he used to go and see her quite a lot. And said that he and a man called Timms, I think, who was a prison chaplain, had been working with her. And they both felt that it was very important for her to get to the very bottom of what she'd done, for her soul's sake, as it were. And would we consider me working with her on her autobiography. And if so, could we come and meet him and Simms at his house and talk about it? But my first and instant feeling was 'no', and I think André's really was, too, but still we both thought it was too interesting not to go and talk. And so we went and talked. Timms was quite… I mean he was a chaplain and he was, like a good Christian man, believing that she could perhaps save her soul by total penitence. You know, proper penitence. She had admitted guilt, but she had always had, sort of, saving clauses, you know. That she'd been young and that she'd been frightened and that he had hypnotised her, more or less.
[CS] Ian Brady?
Brady, yes. David, I think, thought that probably, as a psychiatric… more psychiatric approach, that it would be very good for her, that there she was in prison for the rest of her life, that it would be sort of be a help to her, and it would help all of us to understand evil.
Well, really what I thought was, A: that I didn't see why that it would really save her soul, probably. And B: that one doesn't understand evil beyond a certain point. You… and, you know, knowing more about it doesn't really help. It just gets on being more and more mystifying.
But, on the other hand, my curiosity was so much aroused at the idea of perhaps going and seeing her and talking to her, that I… what really… they then gave me the first chapter or two that she'd worked on, which was impressive. It was her childhood, and up to the point where she first met Ian Brady. And she wrote well, she wrote simply, she was obviously an intelligent woman. She could clearly… absolutely could clearly explain, make one understand how this working-class girl who was very conscious of being more intelligent than any of her relations, and had rather a chip on her shoulder about not being much educated, gets a job.
And there's one very peculiar man at the job, who everyone's a little bit scared of, and he's clearly brilliantly intelligent and he's read millions of books, and he takes her up. She's 19. And makes her his friend and starts lending her books. You can understand why she was deeply flattered by this and excited by it. And you can understand, up to a point, that his whole idea that his scorn for the rest of the world, how one ought to be above the sort of moral considerations of boring, ordinary people. At the age of 19, you know, it was quite seductive. And all that she described very well. But when she began to come to the point where it actually began to happen, she ground to a halt, not unnaturally, and wanted help.
Well, I went there. I saw her. We were alone in the room together, the wardress was sitting outside an open door, snoozing, I think, most of the time. I saw her for an hour, we talked. She was an extremely interesting woman to talk to, because it was extraordinary that you could have been in prison, as she had, I think it was 22 years at that stage, and be so little apparently institutionalised. She was on tranquilisers. You could tell that at first, because her voice was a little bit slow and careful, and Timms told me afterwards. I said, 'Was she on tranquilisers?' He said, 'Yes, she has been on tranquilisers for quite a bit, since she volunteered to help'. I do remember that. She volunteered and was taken out of the prison up to the moors to try and find one of the children's bodies, which never has been found. And that was a very, very disturbing thing for her, and she became quite unable to sleep, and they put her back on tranquilisers after that. But towards the end, of course, the tranquilisers were wearing off and she was talking more fluently. We talked about writing. We talked about the boredom of being in prison. We talked about what she called 'my old men', which was Longford and David Astor, who she laughed at in a scornful way.
We could have gone on talking much longer. She was interesting to talk to. And in a funny way, I liked her. [...]
Read the full transcript at [www.webofstori...]

[@marieconroy8769]

She was 23. She was old enough to kn ow better.

[@glenrix9721]

I think you have misunderstood what Ms Athill said. She displayed no sympathy at all for Hindley and thought only that a book would serve no useful purpose. In fact, she explicitly said that Hindley ‘would have realised that she ought to be dead’.

[@iwasglad122]

This wonderful woman clearly understood her interviewee but would not condone the evil committed by Hindley. Those heinous crimes can be analysed but unequivocally not forgiven.

[@rexel666]

"Her soul"?
Ha! Ha! Ha!

[@louduva9849]

Fancy seeing you here.