TREE OF LIFE
Kate Nicholls’ forthcoming memoir portrays the pleasure and pain of putting down family roots in Botswana
Erica Wagner on a wild tale of brave choices and adventurous parenting
‘Adventure is not a luxury,’ Kate Nicholls says, with passion in her voice. ‘Make a plan, do it and if it doesn’t work, make another plan.’ She’s speaking to me on the phone from her flat in Rome’s Trastevere ahead of the publication of her gripping memoir, Under the Camelthorn Tree, which chronicles a bold and adventurous life.
The book is a portrait of joy, courage and resilience. Nicholls grew up in a theatrical family – her father, Anthony, was one of the founding members of the National Theatre with Laurence Olivier – and both she and her sister Phoebe built successful careers on the stage; I saw her, as it happens, as a brilliant Olivia in Terry Hands’ Twelfth Night for the RSC in 1979. But the expected path was never the one Nicholls would follow. After leaving school at 16, she became fascinated by the science of biology and wrote an impassioned letter to Richard Dawkins, who took her under his wing as she began a profound process of self-education. Then, in 1994, she split up with her long-time partner, the actor Ian McNeice, who wanted to move to America for his job. The break-up, she says, was ‘very undestructive’. Nonetheless, she wanted a fresh start; not all of us might make one so dramatic. ‘One morning I said, I’m going to Africa,’ recalls Nicholls. She stuck a pin in a map to choose which country; within three days she was at the consulate of Botswana in London, and six months later she was off with her five children in tow.
At first, Nicholls – with Emily, her 17-year-old daughter, plus Travers, Angus, Maisie, who were 10, eight and seven respectively, and Oakley, then a babe in arms – was based in town, but they soon moved out to the bush after Nicholls started to work (and live) with the lion biologist Pieter Kat. Some of this remarkable family history has been told by Travers, Angus and Maisie in their 2001 book The Lion Children, but Nicholls has not shared her side of the tale until now. ‘I knew I had a big story to tell,’ she says, laughing. ‘The first version was something akin to War and Peace!’
Under the Camelthorn Tree is woven of several strands, with moments of great sadness and great joy. There is a clear-sighted and heartbreaking account of a violent sexual assault Nicholls suffered in Botswana and its ongoing ramifications, yet this is as far from
a ‘misery memoir’ as you could imagine. ‘It’s a question of balancing light and dark, and holding the reader’s hand,’ says Nicholls. ‘There are some tough bits – but then in the next part you’re going to have a nice time.’ Those nice times are beautiful, whether they’re about a fire-lit supper in camp or watching lions mate in the wild.
At the heart of the book is an account of the family’s life in Botswana and Nicholls’ unique home-schooling system, which resulted in her children gaining admission to venerable universities such as Stanford. She is not, she says, ‘a peace-love-dope home-schooler’. Her method ‘is rigorous, it’s challenging. Young children do not need to know what an adverb is, what a clause is. It’s of no value to them. They are asking the big questions – why is the sky blue? Where do I come from? We need to be teaching them their elements are made in the stars. If they can count to eight we can teach them about chemical structures.’ Homeschooling is now her business and her mission: from her base in Rome she works with children individually to provide a broadbased education that, she argues, schools no longer offer. ‘Because we live in a highly technological society, children have become disempowered,’ says Nicholls. ‘The car breaks down, you call the AA; the heating breaks down, you call the plumber. In most of the world, this is not how it happens.’
At this point I should make a confession: I met Nicholls and her family when I was still in college myself. It was 1988 – before Oakley’s birth – and I spent an extraordinary summer in Fontainebleau helping to look after her children while Ian McNeice was working on Milos Forman’s film Valmont. I was 19; Nicholls was in her early thirties, and I was bowled over by her sheer appetite for life. She and her family were staying in temporary film-set accommodation, yet she turned it into a home in a moment. ‘I want to live life beautifully,’ she says to me now, ‘and taste as much of it as I can. I’m not driven to be the first person to climb a mountain or walk backwards to the South Pole; I want to make homes in different places and be part of them. I love that.’ A fine – and inspiring – creed to live by. ‘Under the Camelthorn Tree’ (£18.99, Weidenfeld & Nicolson) is published on 4 April.