Posted by Alan Hakim on September 16, 2000 at 17:48:39 from asn4-7.mcmail.com:
In Reply to: Re: More about Pauline Marshall, Broadcast and Memoirs... posted by Peter Roche on September 08, 2000 at 19:04:13:
What I was trying to do was to introduce a fact into a discussion that seems dominated by second-hand information. "Is reported" is not a primary source, however reliable your informant. Another fact is that the Chairman of the Southern Region at the time of Pauline's talk was at the same time the editor of "Mixed Moss".
I had thought of adding another point to my previous append, so I will add it now: I get very depressed by all this identification of "the original" of characters and events in books. For years I have assumed that an author will take his experience and blend it into what is effectively original work.
A friend of mine has a flat in the same block as Alan Ayckbourn. She says she recognises characteristics of her neighbours in his plays, but nobody would say the people in the plays were directly based on them.