Tell us about your research interests
My current project is a book about the English at sea, between the sinking of the Mary Rose and the Battle of Trafalgar. This is a trade book for William Collins. I’m also just trying to launch a project about execution in Tudor and early Stuart England, about its material culture. My last book was about English food. The external eye suggests that I hop around a lot, but to me it’s all connected.
Which book has had the biggest impact on you?
The very definition of an impossible question! Academically, probably A Distant Mirror, by Barbara Tuchman; personally, probably Homer’s Iliad.
What do you do in your spare time?
Spare time? What’s that? Generally, gardening, and in winter, knitting. But mostly I’d rather get on with research and writing.
Describe your ideal day.
Somewhere within 10 minutes of a beach, a beach with proper breaking waves and a cold but not freezing ocean. Alternating swimming and reading and cliff walking, and then a seriously gourmet dinner.
If you could live anywhere in the world, where would that be?
Even though I miss the beach in Australia, I’d always rather live in England than anywhere else. I love how ancient everything is. The house I live in is older than Australia is as a country.
As a child, what did you want to be when you grew up?
This is quite funny, because I wanted to be a university lecturer. This makes me sound like the most boring human ever, but it’s because my grandparents had a friend who was a woman academic and I loved visiting her flat because she had so many books.
Who had the greatest influence on you during your childhood?
My grandparents. My grandmother was the best cook I have ever known, and almost completely illiterate. My grandfather was an immensely literate and curious man even though he hadn’t finished school. Descended from convicts, he taught me to value learning and books.
Who were your childhood heroes?
I don’t think I had any. I was a fairly sceptical child. Perhaps Don Bradman, the cricketer?
What teacher had the greatest impact on you?
I had two wonderful history teachers in secondary school, one for ancient and one for modern history. One of them was really supportive, and the other tore my work to shreds.
Do you have pets?
I have a French bulldog and four cats. I would love to have more animals.
Were you popular as a teenager?
I had a small and profoundly introverted circle of friends. I think we repelled the popular girls, both intentionally and unintentionally.
If you could have dinner with five famous people from history, who would they be?
I’ve met quite a lot of famous people, such as Nobel laureates, and you always meet a kind of layer of polythene wrap that they enclose themselves in for protection. Every famous writer, for example, has a series of routines they perform. Completely understandable, and also professors do exactly the same. But that’s why I would choose people we know tantalisingly little about rather than famous people –Ursley Kempe the Essex witch, Robert Aske the leader of the Pilgrimage of Grace, the Gawain-poet, and two randomly chosen ordinary people, one from Tudor London and the other from London at the time of Charles Dickens.
Can I have lunch with them instead? I’m always so sleepy by dinnertime.
Describe yourself in five words.
Ebullient, prickly, shy, curious, talkative.
How would your friends describe you?
It might be sensible to ask them! Probably as that person who talks too much and interrupts all the time?
Why are we here?
To learn as much as we can. About everything that we find interesting. As we learn, we judge less and less.
If you weren’t a member of the English Faculty, what would you be?
At one point when I was in what is now called the precariat, my then supervisor suggested I could successfully run a bakery. I quite like the idea.
Professor Diane Purkiss is a Professor of English Literature in the Faculty of English and Tutorial Fellow at Keble College.
