Billie Piper and Julie Walters head
all-star cast in
Philip Pullman's The
Ruby In The Smoke
Author Philip Pullman writes...
"The first version of this story was called The Curse Of The Indian Ruby, and
it was written as a melodrama. I like the honest simplicity of penny-dreadful
blood-and-thunder, and what's more I take it seriously: the people in the
story may be witty about their predicaments, but if the narrator winks at the
reader above the heads of the characters, then the whole thing changes its
nature at once and becomes camp. I enjoy camp, but I am not in the business
of purveying it.
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"Instead, I tried to make the world of the story as solid and realistic as I
could. So Sally Lockhart is a real young woman, as real as I could make her,
anyway; and the world she lives in is as real as I could make that. The story
is set in 1872, on the very cusp of the modern world, and the series that
starts with The Ruby goes on to touch some modern concerns: feminism,
socialism, new technologies, new forms of social relations. It was a time
when, for example, it was just beginning to be possible for a woman to find
an occupation that was more interesting than teaching or domestic service.
Sally's background, though unusual, is not impossible; and the things her
father has taught her – about keeping accounts, about shooting a pistol –
become the very things her life will depend on.
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"Furthermore, the dark background of the story (the smoke of the title) has
its roots in historical truth. There really was an opium trade between India
and China run by and for the British Government, and this country went to war
with China to force that country to accept the opium we wanted to sell there.
The opportunities for fraud, piracy, skulduggery of every kind must have been
enormous.
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"So there was a solid background for my melodrama. But melodrama it is, and
one of the traditional images of melodrama is the fabled jewel with the curse
on it. Here it's a ruby – red, like blood. As the Book of Proverbs says, the
price of a virtuous woman is far above rubies; and each of the two women at
the centre of this story – Sally herself, and the cunning and vengeful Mrs
Holland – turns out to have been sold, or bought, for the Ruby of Agrapur.
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"A word about Mrs Holland. I love her dearly. She's one of the best villains I
ever thought of, and if I could have foreseen Julie Walters in the part, I
might have … But enough of this futile longing. I'm fond of all the
characters, and Sally is the one at the centre of the story, the one who will
go on and develop in the stories that follow. As I began by saying, she's as
real as I could make her: uncertain, but determined; shy, but brave; trapped
in a dark and dangerous mystery, but finding her feet in the casual, half-commercial, half-Bohemian world of the Garlands and their photographic
business. Billie Piper plays her to perfection.
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"I hope the audience will enjoy watching this penny-dreadful as much as I
enjoyed writing it."
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Philip Pullman
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