Some interviews are just special. Something happens in the room, and then you try to transfer what you felt in the moment into the finished piece. You try not to get in the way of it with your editing and script. You hope that someone who hears it on the radio might feel something of what you felt when recording it.
In July, I spoke to Alice Planel-Frederiks for our Radio 4 series Sketches. We sat together for a couple of hours in her sunny living room, looking through pages of her work and she told me about the experience of losing her son, Bas, to meningitis at 10 months old.
The illustration here is a panel from her work-in-progress graphic novel called Victory March. It’s a working title, taken from the Leonard Cohen song. “That’s my marching song really…. love”, she told me. I was very glad to have the opportunity to talk to Alice and have thought about our conversation a great deal since.
I think her work is beautiful. You can see more of it here: https://www.aliceplanelfrederiks.com/
And you can hear the radio piece I made out of the interview here.