Return to childhood haunts

The author, a tall, jovial figure with a crown of tightly cropped, chalky-white hair, smoothly explains that I am interviewing him here because it brings back fond memories of his childhood, when, as a boy at the Dragon School, he would sneak here for an illicit egg on toast.

“Fine, but I need your table now!,” she says, the hint of a smile briefly lighting up her face.

Nicholas has recently moved to Jericho with his wife and two young children, having spent several years living in Tasmania. I am interviewing him because he has contributed to Oxfam’s new collection of short stories and poetry, Oxtales. Normally he shuns interview requests when his novels, such as his critically applauded 2008 offering, Secrets of the Sea, come out (he prefers his books to do the talking).

But as this was for Oxfam (he is also here to promote his forthcoming talk about Oxtales at the Oxford Playhouse tomorrow, alongside fellow authors Joanna Trollope and Mark Haddon), he thought it churlish to refuse.

Oxfam has mobilised a sparkly literary A-team for the anthology, which aims to highlight the charity’s status as the biggest seller of second-hand books. John Le Carré, Alexander McCall Smith, Joanna Trollope, Ian Rankin, Mark Haddon, Helen Fielding, Jonathan Coe, DBC Pierre, Sebastian Faulks and Kate Atkinson are just some of the stellar names to adorn the contents page.

Shakespeare says he was ‘flattered’ to jump into bed with such eminent contributors and, besides, he’s perpetually frustrated by the fact that in the UK there are so few outlets for short story writing.

His own story concerns a middle-aged white African widow whose farm has been confiscated by a morally bankrupt President, hell-bent on land redistribution. Her tale is entwined with that of Charlotte Corday, who assassinated Jacobin leader Jean-Paul Marat, but although thematically Africa is at the core of his story, it’s hardly a piece of Oxfam propaganda, as Shakespeare is keen to point out.

“In my first drafts, the African state was indistinguishable from Zimbabwe,’ he says. “But I could see I saw from Oxfam’s part, that this could be a problem — that this was a story about a woman who kills Mugabe with full moral weight on her side. Oxfam is one of only a few Western agencies working in Zimbabwe.”

He tweaked it so the setting was more vague, and it now belongs to a collection entitled Earth. The three other collections are Air, Water and Fire — corresponding loosely to Oxfam’s work in agricultural development, climate change, water projects and conflict resolution.

He’s impressed by the quality of all the stories, noting that all too often anthologies for charities tend to be worthy, rather dull affairs.

Our talk meanders from the Oxtales project to his novel writing to Oxford.

His conversation is patterned with lengthy, discursive anecdotes, punctuated with chuckling — after each gleefully told tale, his shoulders shift up and he emits a low-pitched laugh that gently rocks his large frame. I ask him about his connections to the city.

They go back two generations. His grandfather was S P B Mais, a ferociously prolific Oxford-based writer (he wrote over 200 books) who was literary editor of The Oxford Times. His daughter married Nicholas’s father, who became a diplomat. Nicholas grew up all over the world, until he was sent, aged 11, to the Dragon. “Having lived all over the world, it was in Oxford that I first got intimate with England,” he says.

He speaks frankly of the ups and downs of life as a novelist (including a brush with Hollywood — his book The Dancer Upstairs was turned into a film by John Malkovich, whom he liked greatly).

What are his hopes for his latest novel, Inheritance?

“You’re always hoping against hope that something mad will happen — that it’s a bestseller or something like that. . .

“But, of course, you know it’s unlikely. You’re competing with 180,000 other novels. But you just have to give it your best shot.”

* Oxtales is published by Green Profile. Secrets of the Sea is published by Vintage.