Interview with Martin Walker: journalism, writing books, learning online German with tutors

Published by Richard Ahrene in 2022

Martin Walker has settled into a very comfortable existence as an author and unofficial Cultural Ambassador of Le Périgord, sharing his time between Washington, DC and Le Bugue, after a 25-year career as a foreign correspondent for The Guardian, a position originally held by Alistair Cooke, and then for UPI.

On Le Bugue's market day, we got together for coffee and talk.

About journalism

RA: Did writing the Bruno novels benefit from journalism?

MW: As a journalist and international reporter, I'm used to delving deeply into another culture and making sense of it. A journalist can't be timid, therefore I'm also willing to engage in conversation and do interviews. I also love doing research in excellent French Resistance archives like the Centre Jean Moulin in Bordeaux. And since I've spent my working career penning news articles, columns, and feature essays daily, I never get writer's block.

Writing process

RA: My group and I are looking forward to spending the day with you at Le Bugue. It has now developed into an annual, sold-out event that is a future institution. A few years ago, when we first spoke, we discussed Bruno's beginnings, your move from journalist to author, and your love of Le Périgord food.

I want to chat to you today about your writing process and how the gist of an idea, like a trip to a truffle market, motivates you to do research and write.

MW: Every novel begins with an idea that, for reasons I cannot fully articulate, somehow ignites my creative mojo. It may be a spontaneous recollection that is sparked by a visual image, narrative, something I read, a location I visit, or anything else. After being in awe of the 17,000-year-old cave paintings in the Lascaux cave and reading a history of the local Resistance in World War Two, the idea for my first book, The Caves of Perigord (which is not a Bruno tale), struck me. Together, the two concepts produced fruitful offspring.

But because I was living in an area where our ancestors had lived and left their mark for more than 70,000 years, I wanted to write more about this amazing region and the enormous emotional and spiritual influence it had on me. The town policeman, Pierrot, who is also a fantastic cook, a former soldier, a nice and smart man who despises making arrests, and I were playing a lot of tennis at my neighborhood club. Because he was a cop, it had to be a mystery, but I already had the Perigord locale and the central character motivation. When the week-long riots of unruly young immigrants broke out in Paris in 2005, I knew I wanted to write about this subject, exploring not only the social strains of mass migration and the rise of the Front National, but also the history behind it. As a result, I started to see the plot for Bruno, Chief of Police, the first book in the series.

RA: Every time I've been in Le Bugue with you, German visitors have come up to you asking for your signature on at least one Bruno. Germany has seen 2 million copies sold by you. Exists a logical explanation for this?

MW: The most significant factor is that I have a fantastic publisher for the German language, Diogenes, located in Switzerland, who took a major risk on me by launching a significant PR and marketing campaign for my first Bruno novel. German booksellers, who place a high value on looks, have traditionally favored Diogenes as a publishing business.

"German readers want to see an author, to hear an author, and to go near enough to smell an author and build a human connection," Daniel Keel, the creator of Diogenes, told me. He asked me to commit to at least a month of author tours, so I now spend the months of May and October in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland each year. I meet readers there, appear at a different bookstore or literary festival every day, and make appearances on radio and TV. This required me to put a lot of effort into honing my school-level German. Diogenes has a full department devoted to scheduling these writers' travels, and they have a significant influence.

With audiences as small as 50 or as large as 800, I have already performed more than 400 of these events. We occasionally have to utilize theaters, churches, or movie theaters, so I've probably spoken to 50,000 or more people overall. I've also made a lot of acquaintances with book sellers and readers. Even strangers from Germany who met when each was purchasing a Bruno book at a bookshop and struck into a conversation eventually got married and brought their newborn to one of my readings.

Due to the Bruno cookbook's popularity, many of these evenings now feature dinners or lunches that feature a food and wine selection from the Bruno books. These occasions could be a lot of fun. I believe I have seen more of Germany than the majority of Germans, and the superior German rail system allows me to write a lot while riding the trains. Another shrewd move by Diogenes was to have my British and US publishers release a private guide I had prepared for friends on how to have the ideal week in the Perigord on their websites when they learned about it. But Diogenes made it into a 24-page booklet with color images, printed 100,000 copies of it, and slipped it into two of the novels, which caused the number of German tourists to surge so the French government has since awarded me a gold medal for Bruno's influence on tourism.

Learning German with tutors online

RA: How did you master German so quickly?

MW: I started listening to Lotte Lenya, reading Der Spiegel every week, and memorizing Kurt Weil songs. Additionally, I studied with German tutors online.

RA: Getting back to food, tell us about your wine and the winemaker you use. Is it offered in America?

MW: The owners of the Julien de Savignac wine firm, Julien and Caline Montfort, not only sell wine but also have their own family vineyards in the Bergerac. They invited me to help them create and mix a cuvée Bruno red wine. Together, my buddy Raymond, a retired gendarme, and I had a great time choosing the grapes, putting them through tests, and then tasting the blends of cabernet sauvignon, merlot, and cabernet franc that we desired. For the label, I imagined Bruno's basset hound wearing a policeman's képi from France. We produced 5,000 bottles the first year, and we worked out an unique contract with German booksellers so they could sell bottles in addition to by-the-glass sales during my readings. As a result, more than half of the wine we produced was sent to Germany, and the remainder was sold in France. This indicates that the wine was successful enough for us to increase production, as well as to create Bruno's Reserve, a higher-quality wine. As a result of Brexit, it could be more challenging for us to sell it in the UK. To be determined. With so many different states having their own laws, importing wine into the US is an extremely complicated process. Although the US may preach about free trade, it is not actually so straightforward, especially for a small company.

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