Author interview:
the loves and passions of Robin Dalton
It’s not long after sunrise on a brisk winter morning in London and Robin Dalton has decided to take The Weekly’s call from her bed. The 96-year-old author is surrounded by photographs of her late husband, Emmet Dalton, a doctor who died of complications following heart surgery when he was just 33. Robin’s most recent book, One Leg Over, is largely about love and Emmet was without question the love of her life, though she was married thrice and proposed to more times than she can remember.
“My soulmate,” she confesses, “my real, real, love was my husband – not the first husband [a rotter] and not even, bless his heart, the last one [William Fairchild] – but the father of my children. I was blessed with having met Emmet. He’s still my anchor in life, the measure by which I judge everything. This isn’t to say I didn’t have a lovely, amusing, romantic last marriage. I was in love with him, but mainly it was wonderful fun, companionship and shared interests. So I can’t say he was my great love.
“A passion and a love are different things. When I was young and passionate, I was also very much in love with David [David Mountbatten, Marquess of Milford Haven, a British naval officer and a cousin of Prince Philip]. But it’s Emmet I still talk to if I need guidance. He was my greatest love.”
Robin is best known in Australia as the author of Aunts Up The Cross, an amusing, affectionate
tale of growing up in Sydney bohemia in the 1920s and ’30s. Her new book explores her life of joi de vivre and high adventure from there.
She introduces readers to Sydney during World War II, which (after a short-lived first marriage to an abusive and much older barrister) seems to have been a mad whirl of dances and dates with handsome soldiers from around the world.
“The war itself was largely elsewhere. I drove a truck all night feeding people on air-raid duty, but we were never bombed,” she explains. “We had a lot of fun. During the war, we were all terribly promiscuous, but it was because we were in love.”
Robin also had a lot of fun in London, where she arrived on the first post-war flight out of Australia. Rationing was still rife and large tracts of London were rubble, but the artists and aristocrats with whom she kept company subsisted on black market champagne and mini-breaks on the Continent.
At that time, David’s family would not approve marriage to a divorcée, but he and Robin remained together for five years, after which she met Emmet. She and Emmet had two children (Lisa and Seamus) during their tragically brief marriage. Meanwhile, Robin worked as a writer and as a press attaché for the Thai government. She was also approached by British Intelligence to work as a spy, an offer she declined. It was one of the very few opportunities to which Robin has ever said no.
“The reason I’ve had a good life,” she firmly believes, “is that I never say no to anything. I think that’s the answer. If you take every opportunity that’s offered – and some of them could be disastrous – but if you never say no, well, you can find yourself in a lot of fascinating situations.”
Robin glided through the 1970s without paying much heed to feminism. “I don’t understand it,” she says. “I’m not saying I don’t approve of it, but being a woman has never hindered me. I love being a woman. I don’t know what’s wrong with it.”
Robin forged a career as a literary and theatrical agent, representing Arthur Miller, George Orwell, Iris Murdoch, Peter Weir, Joan Collins and others. She also dabbled in movie production, making the film of Peter Carey’s Oscar And Lucinda (featuring a young Cate Blanchett) and Country Life (starring Sam Neill). There is a potential book still to come on her time in the film industry.
Another manuscript lurking, half finished, in Robin’s desk drawer is about her life in Biarritz. She still has a house in the French surfing town and divides her time between there and her home in London. Until a recent shoulder injury, she was an enthusiastic body surfer.
“Oh, I surfed,” she says. “We have really good surf there. It’s almost as good as Bondi. We often host the world surfing championship and I always talk to the Australian team. It’s lovely to watch.
“Not being able to surf [now] has made me feel older. In the past months, I’m beginning to realise I’m really very old. I never believed it before. I’m beginning to have to use a walking stick, though I don’t feel at all old in any other way.”
Does Robin Dalton look forward to reaching 100 and receiving a letter from the Queen? “I know her,” she responds, matter-of-factly. “I was at a party with her the other day. I imagine it wouldn’t be a personal letter. I imagine it would be from some department.”
“The reason I’ve had a good life is that I never say no.”