Camden News: Heath Pond | Deborah Moggach | Bob Hall

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Camden News - by SIMON WROE
Published: 16 October 2008

Author Deborah Moggach pictured with chairman of the Hampstead Heath management committee Bob Hall at Tallow Chandlers Hall

Why novelist is deeply indebted to Heath pond

IDEAS ponds, “lesser-spotted Bill Oddies” and the effluence of Russian oligarchs – novelist Deborah Moggach this week spoke frankly about the elements of Hampstead Heath that have shaped her life and work.
The Hampstead writer praised the “extraordinary work” of the Heath management in preserving the park and described her own experiences on its committee, crawling through a drainage ditch of sewage – “no doubt the Russian oligarch’s” – to view the developments firsthand.
“Half of me is the renegade person who goes swimming in the Ladies Pond at night, and half of me is a middle-aged tut-tutter,” she told guests at the black-tie City of London dinner in Tallow Chandlers Hall on Thursday.
She added: “A lot of our country is Bernard Matthews and people trying to run you over with their 4x4s, but you can come to the centre of London and collect elderflowers, kindling or straw for hens on Hampstead Heath.”
Ms Moggach said the Heath, specifically the “ideas pond” she regularly visited, had helped her to inspire her 17 books, including her latest novel about her grandmother, who was born in Keats House in 1890.
The only problem with the area, continued Ms Moggach, was that few of her writer friends could still afford to live close enough to enjoy it.
“You have to be a Russian oligarch,” she added. Bob Hall, chairman of the Hampstead Heath management Committee, also announced plans to set up a Keats Poetry Prize at the lavish dinner event.

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