Nostalgia Interviews With Chris Deacy

My guest this week is Fran Beaton, Senior Lecturer in Higher Education, who, like me, has been at the University of Kent since 2004. Fran also studied for her first degree at Kent in the 1970s in Modern Languages, and we talk about the differences between Kent now and then. We learn that Fran was brought up in East Anglia and that there was a strong Welsh dimension to her childhood, also. We talk about the extent to which childhood memories are composite in form and about the change of culture in 30 years around ‘stranger danger’. Fran tells us why she didn’t keep a diary as a child and we discuss different styles of writing, such as creative and academic. We learn whether Fran is a Beatles or a Rolling Stones person, and she tells us about how she grew up around classical music, including Benjamin Britten operas which were performed in East Anglia, and we find out about Fran’s passion for going to the theatre, and the danger of things going wrong on stage. Fran reveals how she ended up studying languag