How to compete with Julie Myerson?

I was on the road this week. That is to say – although it sounds a bit less rock’n’roll – I was being driven around by my husband, the writer Nicholas Rankin, because I can’t drive, which is embarrassing. We were on our way to the “Words by the Water” festival in Cumbria, where he was to talk about his new history of deception and camouflage, but also stopping off in Stratford to stay with old friends.

A surprising number of writers don’t drive, which is at best impractical. Whence, perhaps, the title of my new novel, My Driver, a comedy about the post-colonial world in which an inept British writer infuriates her young Ugandan driver as they travel to see the mountain gorillas at Bwindi, accidentally risking death in a war zone. In real life, however, I strive to be an active passenger. I dutifully juggle snacks, apples and maps for my chauffeur and seduce him with chocolate. Only occasionally am I too deep in my important crossword to answer correctly as he thunders up the motorway demanding, “Is it exit 22? Quick, is it?”

Once we get to Stratford we don’t have to drive at all. My friends, James and Kathy Stredder, live a ten-minute walk from Shakespeare’s boyhood home. Tourists crowd the narrow staircases and primary-coloured reconstructions of 16th-century wall hangings look disconcertingly new. When I start to ask a question about Shakespeare, the guide pre-empts me: “I only know about the furniture.” So I hasten to admire it.

Walking to Holy Trinity Church, where Shakespeare is buried, I run into the novelist Patricia Duncker, and we exchange big surprised smiles: writer ahoy! The church, unlike the birthplace, is a marvellous experience, mostly because of the skill of the tall, silver-haired man giving a talk in the chancel. He tells us that Shakespeare became a rector of this church, and gave it £440 (modern equivalent: c.£65,000) for the right to be safely buried within the church, near the altar, so his body would not be disturbed by the “heavies” who dug up the cadavers and shifted them to the charnel house. How practical of Shakespeare: understanding writing is a struggle for survival, he paid for his own immortality. Seeing his stone and touching the worn edge of the font where he was christened, I felt a small shivering thrill.

That evening, we attend Janice Honeyman’s superb Royal Shakespeare Company production of the bard’s last play, The Tempest, set on an African island near the collapse of colonialism. The South African cast includes Antony Sher as Prospero and John Kani as a surly, crippled black Caliban. As Prospero yields up his powers and the life of the play ebbs to an end, there is a striking reinvention of the epilogue. As usual, Prospero addresses a plea (which every writer hears as Shakespeare’s own) to the audience: “Gentle breath of yours my sails/Must fill, or else my project fails,/Which was to please.” But in this production it is to Caliban, not the audience, that Prospero directs his final prayer for forgiveness: “As you from crimes would pardon’d be,/Let your indulgence set me free.” This exchange of absolution frees both men, and Caliban stands upright at last. It was a very South African triumph. I clapped so much I had to slip off my rings.

Next, Nick drives me to Leeds. We are unprepared for the riches of Leeds Art Gallery’s early 20th-century holdings. If you have never been, go now. The building, like much of central Leeds, has the massive confidence of times of industrial and, yes, colonial prosperity, when the government was not printing toytown money, and my great-aunt Ede worked in the nearby cotton mills. The staircase preserves half a dozen Stanley Spencers and almost as many Walter Sickerts: some wonderful Edward Wadsworths and David Bombergs, and some unforgettably elegant Paul Nashes live here. There are some pale, tender Henri Fantin-Latour roses, too. “This is better than the Tate,” I thought, as I bought a big placating latte for my driver, and we drove on, glad to be on the road and out of London.

The other morning I caught Julie Myerson on breakfast television, talking about her “lost” son Jake. It’s a problem, having a book out at the same time as her, because I am just not getting the right sort of help from my family. My 22-year-old daughter Rosa has never smoked skunk or knocked me down, though she once bumped into me in the bathroom. She is in Granada, in Spain, so I phone her. Perhaps I threw her out, and simply don’t remember? But she is unhelpful, claiming she is on her year abroad for her languages degree at Durham. She refers me to her blog, at ensaladagranada.blogspot.com, which is evidence that she made the biggest sandwich ever seen and danced all night at Cadiz carnival, dressed as a dog. But she wasn’t even drunk! Shape up, Rosa, or we’ll never have a bestseller.

“My Driver” is published by Telegram (£12.99)

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