Page 24 - Diva_3_2024_Irak Special_

irak special

rejection letters. It made me so angry that in the know that, rather than take their aunties’ is to make regular discoveries of astonishing
end I wrote this story to get my own back, and, diaries and disposed of them – you know when things so that it gets into the media. Years
much to my amazement, it’s been translated old ladies die and people bury their diaries ago, I was invited by radio 4 BBC to do four
into French, Livre de Poche. immediately in case they’re private. But after talks about cuneiform writing. I did the first
a while, privacy becomes rather irrelevant. on Sunday afternoon, about tea time. When
I’ve written three books about a lady called Nobody says you shouldn’t read cuneiform the last one was nearly finished and I was
Miss Barbellion who’s about 78 and used to tablets because they’re private, when they’re reading it, I said, “Ooh the one thing I want
be a missionary then thought better of it, and written in 2000 B.C. It’s just not relevant any to say…” So, the producer said “Okay.” So, I
what happened to her when she was an old lady more. So, I started this project, and it’s gotten said, “When I’m prime minister, [I can see the
when she came back to England. She moved bigger. People were in their houses for two producer getting a bit wiggly on his chair],
into the family house. They found a great big years with nothing to do. When you’re really when I’m prime minister, we’re going to get
doll’s house in it. All sorts of adventures. I bored, you start tidying up the house. I said, “If rid of time writers and computers and we’re
wrote three books about Miss Barbellion, and you find these things, don’t throw them away, going to teach cuneiform writing at the school
I want my agent to find a publisher because the send them here, we’ll look after them.” They with clay so that lots and lots of people learn
first one was published by a small publisher came thick and fast, and so I’m trying to write to read and write cuneiform so we’ll have an
and that was the end of that, but I’ve written a book about it. It’s such an unending and big army of people to come to the British Museum
two more. So, I’m hoping. subject. it’s very complicated. Then, I also have and work on all these documents all these
one other book I’m doing, about Babylonian hundred thirty thousand clay blocks.”
How did you find time to do all this? medicine, because we have lots and lots of
It was like an Ikea box with all the stuff inside. Well, I used to write a lot on the bus going to documents to do with it – gynecology, inner That was the end of that fantasy, and it was
It was a round boat, a coracle, which is a guffa in work. And when we went away on a holiday, I pains, external things, therapy and drugs. the end of the program. This was on Sunday.
Arabic. They used to use guffas on these rivers, was hidden in the greenhouse at my parents- On Monday I’m at my desk about 11 o’clock
but they were bigger for ferrying sheep and in-law’s house and wrote books there. If you I’ve discovered that the older you get, the having a coffee and reading something, the
grandmothers across the river. The one in the write a technical one or do a serological work, more interesting everything becomes, more phone rings, and I hear hello “Dr. Finkel,
Book is the size of a football pitch. We made everything has to be perfect with the footnotes than I’ve ever had any idea. there’re are three girls down here. They’ve
a replica of it. There was a film of it. This book and the references. Otherwise, people shoot come to join the cuneiform army.” I went
has been translated into a few languages, and it’s you the minute it comes out. So, it’s very Do you have young students working with down and there were three young ladies who
just been done into Arabic, which is exciting. exacting and very tiring. If you want to write you? had heard this program and they had come to
fiction, all you have to do is write what comes I do work with students when I can but we join the army. I explained, “Well it will take
How many books you have written into your head. It’s wonderful. don’t have students in the museum. That’s only you about six years to learn this script, you’ve
altogether? in the university. I get to do a lot of lectures. got to get to university, and you’ve got to do
Well, those are the two popular books. I like What does your wife say? When I’m asked, I always say yes. this and that. If you do this, the stuff that we
writing about Mesopotamia using ancient She’s given up on me, really, but she’s still trying have here you’ll find it marvelous.” They went
words and explaining what things mean for an to influence me. I think she’s very tolerant, Do you take on interns? away happily. One of them applied to Oxford
ordinary readership, real people, not scholars. and her idea is that one day we’ll write a book Well, actually we do have interns but you to do stereology, got in and she did a degree
There’s no point in writing a book for scholars. that’ll be a best seller which makes a lot of have to be very careful because some interns in stereology got a first-class degree, stayed on
I’ve done two books like that, and then I’ve money! are lazy and some of them are careless. Some and did a PhD in stereology. She is now in the
written some novels, children’s books, some don’t turn up, and most of them don’t know field. So that throwaway remark, one seed in
complex, a serological. So what is your next project? anything at all so, by the time you explain the furrow, bore fruit.
I’m writing a big book about this Royal Game what you want them to do, you might as well
I write all sorts of things. I have an agent who of Ur. About 20 years ago, I had an idea to just do it yourself. Leaving Dr Finkel to his occupations, we were
despairs of me because he wants me to write start a rescue project for manuscript diaries happy and determined to find this game, the
the same book eight times so he knows what because people in Britain for many centuries It’s a pity because if you don’t have anyone Royal Game of Ur that even the guards on the
it is. One of my favorite things is to wrote a have been regular diarists. When people die who can follow up your work, the day that you Holy cities in Mesopotania played while they
book called The Last Resort Library. It’s about their diaries are usually thrown away. I thought are no longer there, what will happen? were on duty. The only place you can find it is
somebody who creates a library to rescue this is terrible and that we should try to do I mean there are always going to be people at the British Museum’s website
books, articles, poetry and fiction that have something about it. So, I started collecting who’ve done a bit of stuff at university. When I www.britishmuseum.org
been rejected by publishers or by agents. If you diaries and then publicizing it. Then there’s was a student it was on the way up, and as I say
wanted to leave manuscripts to this library you an old library in London which has taken now in the universities it’s on the way down.
had to have rejection letters to go with them. this on and has more than 14,000 diaries
It’s a fictional idea because I wrote quite a lot of from nineteenth, twentieth and twenty-first Do you think it can come up again?
books, quite a lot of things and got all sorts of centuries. Some are even older. When people There are lots of ways it could. One of them

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