Barry Northam was Interviewed by Sara Fisher during the Caldecott Archive Weekend of August 2010, reference: HLF-CAL-005-OH. This is a transcript of part of that interview. Barry has also written memories of Caldecott, which can be found here.
BARRY: Before Caldecott I went to The Mulberry Bush and I was a bit disappointed that I think - part of the reason for my coming to somewhere like Caldecott was that I was too drawn to intellectual pursuits. Not just that I enjoyed them but I had to be first and, I got really disappointed if I didn’t do well. I think it was for that reason that it was decided that I should - as it was put to me because, decisions were made for children in those days and they weren’t always explained, quite fully - and I was told it was a choice between sending me away on a farm for a year, or sending me to what they referred to as boarding school. And they had chosen boarding school so, I went to Caldecott - I’m beginning to lose the train of my argument there [laughs] but yes when I went to The Mulberry Bush I found that they had very little in the way of schooling, which was okay, but, you know I would have preferred a bit more. I think I was probably the only person who [laughs] would have preferred a bit more.
Apart from that, we - I suppose I spent a lot of time reading, we had a very good library at Caldecott, Elizabeth Lloyd was the librarian and managed to find you books that she thought you ought to read. I still remember reading books, I think they were probably Victorian books, written in Victorian times by authors that I wouldn’t have heard of if I’d been looking for them today. Henry Seaton Merriman was one, he wrote a books called ‘The Seekers,’ which I think was about Russia under the Tzar. I can’t remember much more about it. There was a book called 'Flight of The Heron' by D K Bronte who turned out to be a woman, that was about war and revolution or something in Scotland, which was quite interesting. It would be interesting to see them again to see what I think of them now as an adult, because I don’t know whether they were specifically written for children, I think probably not. But anyway, Elizabeth Lloyd put me onto these books and I became hooked and I, probably did, I probably read about three quarters of the books I ever read, between the ages of ten and twenty-five and when you grow up you, of course you have other pursuits, you get married and have children and you don’t have quite so much time for that.
SARA: Hmmm -- so you developed very much intellectually between those ages?
BARRY: Well, I think I was very intellectual before, but of course we are developing all the time...
SARA: Ah...
BARRY: ...and, I think the whole point of me being there was to make sure I developed in other ways as well. To give me a broad background as it were and I think, somebody yesterday said something which I realised was – was what I think is most important, or one of the most important things about Miss Leila’s arrangements for Caldecott, and that is that she always chose to live in big houses. And not just big houses but usually a sort of stately home or a very comfortable house, where the children had plenty of room to roam around and it certainly transformed, well I’m pretty sure it transformed my attitude, because had I grown up at home, it was in a council house. We were in Salt Ash at first, which is a small town just opposite Plymouth, on the other side of the river Tamar, and later in Plymouth. And I would have had a very provincial attitude and I, probably would have learned a lot about the outside world at school, but I think I learnt an awful lot more by eating in an Adam dining room, reading books in an Adam library, with Adam ceilings which were fortunately too high for butter pats [laughs]
SARA: [Laughs]
BARRY: And hmm, Adam fireplaces, which I’m sure got a little bit scarred here and there but not that badly because I think, most of the children came to respect their environment. You know if you give them a nice place to live, they’re a bit like cats really, you know [laughs], if you give them a clean place to live they’ll keep it clean, well if you give children a nice place to live in they tend to - they tend to respect it, not everybody but er, most of them.