‘I have always lived in a house full of books’
Jenny Gill, who heads a billion-dollar foundation, set out at a young age to read all the children’s books in the library.
As a seven-year-old, Jenny Gill set herself the target of reading all the children’s books in the library.
Five generations of Jenny Gill’s family have shared and treasured a book that was a gift to a little girl 120 years ago. Gill’s grandmother Ethel Frost was given A World of Girls, by Mrs LT Meade, as a Christmas present in 1896. It was signed “With kind wishes, Mrs Mann”, and the now-delicate volume has become a family heirloom, passed down over the years by Ethel’s descendants.
A World of Girls is one of several books with special significance for Gill, now a grandmother herself, who has been an avid reader for as long as she can remember.
Gill heads Foundation North, which, with funds of more than a billion dollars, is New Zealand’s wealthiest community foundation. It has made grants of almost $40 million this year to organisations and groups in Auckland and Northland. She and her husband have three children, one of them a published author, and reading is a favourite pastime at home.
What’s your first memory of reading?
The first book I ever owned was Nursery Rhymes by Margaret Tarrant. It’s my earliest memory and I treasured that book. My children read it and so has my grandson. It’s definitely to be used, not just looked at. My grandfather was a bookseller in Ngaruawahia: the business was EH Pharo Bookseller and Tobacconist. My mother was an English teacher, so reading and books are in the blood, in the family.
My mother read to me, and I think I could probably read before I went to school, because she exposed us to so many books. Until about 1960, we lived in Waiouru, because my father, Jack Gill, was in the army. Waiouru was a thriving place, but there was no library. I’ve always lived in a house full of books and reading was just what you did. I have a sister and a brother and my mother made sure we had books.
What sort of books did your mother provide for you?
Books were important, but we weren’t allowed to read Noddy books or comics. “Quality” literature was important, so we only read Noddy when we were at other children’s houses. We didn’t have a television until I was at high school. We had a radio and would listen to the National Programme’s stories for children on Sunday mornings, things like Flick the Fire Engine and Diana and the Golden Apples. We also had records of classic children’s literature being read by people with classic BBC accents.
“We grew up with Robin Redbreast, red postboxes, double-decker buses and snow at Christmas.”
Did you have any exposure to New Zealand life and culture in your reading materials?
In the 1950s, there wasn’t much. We moved to Wellington when I was in Standard 2, so I would have been about seven, and I remember opening the School Journal and reading a story by
Elsie Locke, in which children climbed up willow trees and jumped into rivers. I can remember thinking – in fact, I can still even picture the page and the pen-and-ink drawing
– “This is the first time I’ve read anything that’s like me and my cousins and our summer holiday.” We were the generation that grew up with Robin Redbreast, red postboxes, double-decker buses and snow at Christmas.
When I was in the seventh form, we had a teacher who focused on New Zealand literature, so I got to read things like John Mulgan’s Man Alone and The Young Have Secrets by James Courage, as well as some of Maurice Gee’s early works. I don’t think I had any real experience of New Zealand literature until then. My children grew up with Margaret Mahy, Maurice Gee, Joy Cowley – a whole raft of writers who were writing children’s literature and, in particular, for New Zealand children.
Your son and daughter-in-law are published authors. Tell us about their books.
My son Tom Doig wrote Moron to Moron and The Coalface. The latter is not dissimilar to Rebecca Macfie’s work looking at the Pike River disaster. Tom’s doing a PhD in Australia but intends to make a living out of writing. His wife’s book, Holiday in Cambodia [by Laura Jean McKay] came out 2013, and it is about to be published in Khmer, which is very exciting.
You’re a lifelong library user and advocate of libraries.
When we lived in Waiouru, I read everything on our shelves and everything the school provided, but we didn’t have a library. We moved to Wadestown when I was seven, and we had two libraries and I had a bus pass. After school, I was free to go to the Wellington Central Library on the bus, and once a week I’d get three books and then go to the Wadestown Library on a Monday and get three more. I was reading six books a week.
I loved the library and at one point set myself the target of reading all the books on the children’s shelves. I can’t remember how far I got. There were fabulous children’s librarians who recognised you and suggested books you might read. There’s such an enormous amount coming out in New Zealand and overseas that you have to make choices. I read a lot of memoir and biography, particularly memoirs written by authors. They’re beautifully written, and if I’ve read their work, reading their memoir is a wonderful experience. Hilary Mantel is a good example.
I read some history and politics, and general non-fiction as it comes along. I read the Listener, Metro, the London Review of Books and the New Yorker if I have time.
Time becomes a bit of an issue. If I’m not out, I go to bed each night at 9 with a book and read until 10. Last night, I finished The Mandibles, by Lionel Shriver. It is extraordinary, one of the most upsetting books I have read in a long time. She’s talking about America between 2029 and 2049, following the fortunes of a family and postulating what’s coming. It’s utterly terrifying. The future looks so grim, but the seeds of it all are in today’s society. She picks up on themes like racism, the cost of care for the elderly and low-wage economies, weaving it all into a dystopia, really. Not particularly good night-time reading.
Do you share her pessimism?
I’m a total optimist, always. It’s a bit of reality check, though, when you look at the current presidential election in America and think what the outcome could be and the implications of that.
You’ve spent virtually all your working life in philanthropy. What’s the appeal for you?
Philanthropy can be one of the most extraordinarily positive forces for social change in any society, partly because we’re not political. We’re not central government, not local government – we’re a fund held in perpetuity. We’re the largest in Australasia – our endowment is over a billion dollars. When you step into the world of philanthropy, you see the power of really well thought through and strategic interventions.
“Books were important, but we weren’t allowed to read Noddy books or comics.”