Ian McEwan: 'An inspiration, yes. Did I copy from another author? No'
Ian McEwan writes at length in the Guardian today, rejecting claims made by the journalist and biographer Julia Langdon in yesterday's Mail on Sunday that sections of his Booker-shortlisted novel, Atonement, bore "significant similarities" to No Time for Romance, the wartime memoir of the then-nurse and romantic novelist, Lucilla Andrews.
When Andrews died last month, it emerged that she'd been planning to draw attention to the "borrowing" in her acceptance speech for a lifetime achievement award from the Romantic Novelists' Association, which illness eventually prevented her from attending. In the words of her agent, Vanessa Holt, quoted in the Mail on Sunday piece (which doesn't appear to be available online): "I don't think she was going to just let it go. She was going to bury the hatchet - and mark the spot."
But McEwan has come out fighting. He points out that "the writer of a historical novel may resent his dependence on the written record, on memoirs and eyewitness accounts, in other words on other writers, but there is no escape," and ends by saying "I openly acknowledged my debt to [Lucilla Andrews] in the author's note at the end of Atonement, and ever since on public platforms ... I have spoken about her in numerous interviews and in a Radio 4 tribute. My one regret is not meeting her. But if people are now talking about Lucilla Andrews, I am glad. I have been talking about her for five years."
Speaking to the Times last night, McEwan said that his conscience on the subject was "absolutely clear". The Times article ends, however, with a comparison of lines from Atonement and No Time for Romance that will doubtless offer McEwan's critics enough in the way of similarities to keep the debate rumbling on.
