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their dream in favour of a sensible job. But Swift, "contrary to the immediate evidence", was convinced that he had what it took. He taught adult evening classes in English and began rising at 5.30am to write. It would be another six years before the publication of his first novel, The Sweet-Shop Owner.

As Swift is the first to acknowledge, "my upbringing was absolutely not the archetypal writer's upbringing. Even, arguably, the opposite. I came from a lower-middle-class postwar family in a time of austerity and retrenchment, with no one in the family who was in any way artistic or a potential mentor to a budding writer and yet this is what I became. How the hell did I get here? It often stops me in my tracks". And, indeed, though he doesn't voice it in as many words: "How on earth did I end up going fishing with the Poet Laureate?"

One answer, he says, is fear. "I had a fear of becoming anything, a fear of becoming a specialist. I might have become a doctor, but if you become a doctor, that's your speciality in life and you are defined by it. One of the attractions of being a writer is that you're never a specialist. Your field is entirely open; your field is the entire human condition."

Swift was brought up in Croydon, in a house on the very edge of London. "There was a farm about half a mile away and then countryside. As I grew up, a lot of that land was developed and became general suburbia." It was a happy childhood. "My mother was a great bringer-up of children. My memories are of a sense of security and comfort."

As he grew older, however, he became closer to his father, who died in 1992. His father was a man of contrasts: the wartime fighter pilot who became a clerk in the National Debt Office, the model of anonymous commuter respectability. As a boy, Swift remembers "this outwardly extremely conventional and boring civil servant". But his father was also a man as practical as his younger son was bookish.

Today, sitting in a Wandsworth pub a short walk from his current home and "no more than five miles from where I was brought up",

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Swift acknowledges his rootedness: "I'm an urban person. I'm not restless." Given this, and the close proximity of much of his material – the Wimbledon setting of The Light of Day; the Bermondsey of Last Orders; the Clapham of Shuttlecock – one could be forgiven for imagining assiduous foot-slogging research of the Iain Sinclair kind. Not a bit of it. "I don't research," Swift says. "It's a great destroyer of the imagination."

And so most of his time is spent at home. He wakes without an alarm clock, slips quietly to his office without waking his wife and sets to work. He writes with a Waterman, using black-ink cartridges on Oxford A4 feint-ruled pads. "I like the moment the ink runs out and you have to put another one up the spout," he says. "It's like putting in ammunition."

The very early morning is a time of "guaranteed non-interruption", something he's also been assured by not having children, a decision he puts down simply to "never having felt enough of what it is you need to feel to have them". Maybe because of the pram-less hall, Swift appears younger than his years and is boyishly enthusiastic about writing. At times, he's made handsome money, but for him earnings such as movie rights – occasionally a mixed blessing, as with the experience of Stephen Gyllenhaal's adaptation of Waterland, which he describes as "the movie business at its crassest" – have always been seen in terms of buying time for writing the next book.

"There's no doubt that writing can on occasion be grim, lonely, miserable, desperate and wretched," he says, "and there were many years when I struggled materially. But I've also known wonderful times. Writing is a very emotional thing, especially when words come in a way that you know is right. At the heart of the writer's life there can be a great sweetness. And it's also a great adventure: your whole life, from book to book, is a constant adventure."

4 True, False or Doesn’t Say?

1.Graham Swift quickly became a very popular author after he was named as a promising young writer.

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2.His first writing attempt was a novel about Greece which was a failure.

3.Swift’s success was a result of his persistence, great tenacity, patience and hard work.

4.His family background was favourable for him to become a writer.

5.He likes his job because it doesn’t bound him and gives insight into human nature.

6.Graham Swift liked his mother’s talent for telling stories when he was a child.

7.He associates his instrument of writing with a weapon.

8.The film adaptation of Waterland was quite lucrative for Swift but he disliked the result.

9.Writing helps Swift to cope with depressions and helps him to survive trying times.

5Fill in the 1st column of the table with facts from the article you have read.

6 Listen to a part of an interview with Graham Swift. The interview was taken by Don Swaim in New York in1985, soon after Graham Swift had published his first successful novel Waterland. Fill in the 2nd column with the new information.

7Read the blurbs on the back of the book. What do you expect from Waterland? Does the book seem more attractive to you after reading the blubs?

8How do you think a writer starts to write a book? Does it start with an idea, a character or an episode? Listen to Graham Swift telling about his novel Waterland and find out what it was for him.

9 Listen again if necessary and answer the question: what have you got to know about the plot of the book, its main character and idea? What is more important for a book: an great idea or a great story? What makes a book popular? What makes it a good book? Give examples.

10Read the epigraphs. Why do you think Swift chose those?

11The protagonist of the novel often refers to the French revolution and personalities of that period. Search for information on the French Revolution, find out how, when and why it started and what it resulted in, who took part in it and who suffered from it. Prepare a report and present it to other students.

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7 Translate the sentences into English using words and expressions from Vocabulary Practice Section. Pay attention to the underlined words and expressions.

1. Смотритель шлюза любил безмятежные ночные прогулки во- круг болот. 2. У Синди был талант рассказывать истории – весе- лые, берущие за душу, увлекательные, любые, за исключением страшных и скучных. 3. Земля в этих краях совсем истощилась, даже с удобрениями урожай был скудным. 4. Смазать шестерни, убрать мусор – эти простые обязанности отнимали полчаса в день, плюс-минус пять минут. 5. Она так долго вынашивала этот план, усложняя и оттачивая его, что в итоге сама пала жертвой собст- венной изобретательности. 6. У всего живого в эти жаркие дни появилась непреодолимая тяга к водным процедурам. 7. Кузьма Скрябин одет просто и стильно, общается точно так же. Никакой тебе спеси, звездной болезни и прочих проблем, постоянно пре- следующих знаменитых людей.

Comprehension and Discussion

8 Answer the questions below.

1)‘And don’t forget … whatever you learn about people, however bad they turn out, each one of them has a heart, and each one of them was once a tiny baby sucking his mother’s milk…’ What do these words mean? Do you agree with these words? Why does the narrator call them ‘fairy-tale advice’?

2)Why does the narrator tell us that ‘my father … had a knack for telling stories’?

3)What do we learn about the narrator’s family and childhood?

4)What makes it ‘a fairy-tale land’?

5)What is it that disturbs the fairy-tale?

Language and Style

9 Translate the following passages into Russian.

1)“And don’t forget’,… – …his mother’s milk.” (p. 1)

2)“My father kept the lock on the river Leem… – …to crank up the sluice” (p. 3)

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2. About the End of History

PRE-READING

Focus Activity 1 Discuss the following questions.

1)When do you think history ends for a person?

2)When does it end for the world?

2Consult a dictionary and find out how to pronounce the following words.

rationale, a sabbatical term, quaint, contagious

ACTIVE READING

Vocabulary Practice

3 Find the English equivalents to the following words and expressions. Give the context they are used in.

умиротворяющий (p. 5), разумное объяснение; логическое обос- нование (p. 5), беглость, небрежность (p. 5), рассказ, анекдот, байки (p. 6), вместилище; резервуар (p. 7)

4Find the synonyms to the following words and expressions. omen (p. 6), dangerous (p. 7), unstoppable (p. 7), trite (p. 7)

5Give a word or expression for the following definitions.

1)a period of paid leave granted to a university teacher for study or travel, traditionally one year for every seven years worked (p. 6)

2)a rosette or knot of ribbons worn in a hat as a badge of office, or as part of a livery (p. 7)

3)attractively unusual or old-fashioned (p. 7)

6 Give the Russian equivalents to the following English words and word combinations.

unravel the mysteries (p. 5), it dawned on sb (p. 6), teacher-baiter (p. 6), rolled into one (p. 7)

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7 Translate the sentences into English using words and expressions from Vocabulary Practice Section. Pay attention to the underlined words and expressions.

1. Опытный бухгалтер может подвести логическое обоснование под практически любое финансовое действие. 2. Элен осенило, что из-за небрежности осмотра у нее не отняли оружие и она мо- жет смело продолжать свое опасное путешествие. Новость по- действовала на нее умиротворяюще. 3. Он един в двух лицах: он ведь и писатель, и актер. 4. Иранские археологи, работающие в Долине ассасинов на северо-западе страны, обнаружили в руи- нах замка Аламут несколько складских помещений и резервуа- ров для воды, однако им так и не удалось раскрыть тайну, каким образом секта безжалостных убийц, владельцев замка, получа- ла воду и провиант в достаточных количествах, чтобы выдержи- вать длительные осады, учитывая, что в Аламуте во время войны могли укрываться несколько тысяч человек. 5. Вроде начина- лось кино как банальный рассказ о беспределе 90-х, а закончи- лось как мрачная, тоскливая, безысходная сказка для взрослых. 6. Старинная причудливая мебель украшала залы особняка Ашеров. 7. Мужчинам-приставам положены кепи черного цвета с кокардой. 8. Чудо-ребенок совмещал в себе таланты к матема- тике и стихосложению. 9. Смирнов взял академический отпуск на год, чтобы спокойно закончить работу над диссертацией.

Comprehension and Discussion

8 Answer the questions below.

1)What happens between the end of the previous chapter and the start of this one?

2)Who is Lewis and what does he offer to Tom Crick? What does he have against Tom Crick?

3)To what extent do you agree with Price that ‘What matters … is here and now. … The only important things about history … is that it’s got to a point where it’s probably about to end.’?

4)Is that true that ‘children[‘s] … need of stories is matched only by the need adults have of children to tell stories to.’?

5)Why do adults need to tell stories?

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Creating a Commentary

9Comment on the meaning and usage of the following references and allusions, give the context they are used

in.

Afghan crisis (p. 7), Tehran hostages (p. 7), cockades (p. 7), liberty caps (p. 7)

3. About the Fens

PRE-READING

Focus Activity

1Find the Fens on the map of Great Britain.

The Great Ouse in Ely

www.britishwalks.org/walks/Name

d/FenRivers.php

2 Consult a dictionary and find out how to pronounce the following words.

equivocal, arduous, ague, sabotage, inundated, amphibians, tether, sanguine, cauldron, yield, catechism, will-o’-the-wisps, somersault, shrapnel, morass, neurasthenics

3Consult a dictionary and find out how to pronounce these place names and find or mark them on the map.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Fens-OMC.jpg

ACTIVE READING

Vocabulary Practice

4 Find the English equivalents to the following words and expressions. Give the context they are used in.

двусмысленный, неопределённый (p. 9), стойкий, прочный, не- поддающийся воздействию (p. 11), снижение, спад (p. 12), по- гружаться под воду (p. 12), подчинять, покорять (p. 13), оковы, узы (p. 14), отшельник, пустынник (p. 15), влага, жидкость (p. 15), флегма, флегматичность (p. 15), оптимистичный, сангви- нический (p. 16), кипеть на медленном огне (p. 16), перехитрить, провести, обмануть (p. 17), провидец, прорицатель (p. 18), пустой (p. 18), подол (p. 18), бесплодный (p. 18), вторгаться (куда-л.), покушаться, посягать (p. 19), осажденный (p. 19)

5 Find the synonyms to the following words and expressions.

attempt (p. 8), fecundity (p. 9), to hinder (p. 9), difficult (p. 10), ancestor (p. 10), speed (p. 11), angry (p. 14), output (p. 16), gullible (p. 17), hermit (p. 20)

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