Viva Lewes Issue #149 February 2019

ON THIS MONTH: LITERATURE
Charlotte Higgins
Red Thread spinner
My first question to Charlotte Higgins,
February’s Lewes Literary Society guest,
who I’m speaking to down the phone, is a
little unfair. I ask her to give me a nutshell
description of her recently published book Red
Thread – On Mazes and Labyrinths.
Charlotte is the Chief Culture Writer for the
Guardian, and before our conversation I’ve
been reading Red Thread, a beautifully sculpted
and illustrated hardback which journeys into
the culture of labyrinths, and the labyrinthine
nature of culture. You might have heard
extracts of it on Radio 4 – it was their Book of
the Week in the first week of August.
It’s not something she can contain within one
sentence – or even six, as it happens – but she
does come up, in the middle of a response it
later takes me ages to transcribe, with this:
“It’s… an exploration of the way that the idea
of mazes or labyrinths has been invoked as
a metaphor; as a way for understanding and
describing the world; as a way of understanding
and describing the human psyche.”
It’s also something of a memoir. “The labyrinth
resembles the human brain, doesn’t it?” she
continues. “That coiled mass. So in effect it
[the book] is the imprint of my brain… This
labyrinthine book about labyrinths is in a way
some kind of self-portrait. If that doesn’t sound
too pretentious. Which I’m sure it does. But
anyway…”
It won’t sound pretentious to anyone who has
attempted to negotiate their way through the
book, an ambitiously structured collection
of culturally informed episodes, each
thematically connecting to the next, with
red herrings thrown in to divert from the
ultimate message. There are guides along the
way – some of whom prove helpful – including
Virgil, Umberto Eco, Sigmund Freud, the
archaeologist Arthur Evans, Stanley Kubrick,
and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.
And, most importantly, a certain Sofia
Grammataki, a Cretan classicist who took a
pre-teen Higgins on a tour of Knossos (where
Daedalus’ mythical labyrinth was sited) while
she was on holiday with her parents. Many
years later Higgins found a postcard given to
her by Grammataki with the guide’s address
on it, and – both being labyrinth enthusiasts –
they became regular correspondents.
Or did they? Having not yet completed the
book by the time we talk, I’m not entirely
sure, as Higgins admits that Red Thread – even
though it’s shoe-horned into the ‘non-fiction’
shelves of bookshops, does contain some
consciously fashioned fictitious twists. “The
mythical labyrinth was a trap, it was a place
that was designed to baffle the person who
went into it, so there was no way I could write a
book without containing a little trap, otherwise
that wouldn’t be a labyrinth, would it?”
All very intriguing, and I’m looking forward
to more guidance when she comes to town on
the 12th. Or returns, as it happens: she’s been
to Lewes before. “I found its layout slightly
confounding,” she admits. “I have a limited
sense of direction when it comes to towns and
cities.” Alex Leith
Lewes Literary Society, All Saints, 12th Feb,
8pm. lewesliterarysociety.co.uk
Photo by David Levene
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