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Dressed in black from head to toe, sipping dry sherry and thinly warmed by two small electric heaters, Author Compton-Burnett speaks with dry severity of her books, classing them as "between novels and plays." None have been staged, though six have been adapted for radio. She writes in dialogue because "it just came naturally—I think in conversation." But she will not tolerate "frivolous" topics, as, for instance, the date of her birth ("Such matters are gossip").
Early sorrow, in the death of her mother and two brothers while she was in her 203, shadowed Compton-Burnett's life and doubtless her fiction. A lonely woman, especially since the death of her companion, Journalist Margaret Jourdain, in 1951, she is no recluse. She is a theatergoer and relishes the Angry Young Men. Modern art, on the other hand, baffles her: "Recently I went to an exhibition of sculpture and saw what I thought was a swordfish. But I was told it was a family going out for a walk." Actually, this is a rather apt description of an Ivy Compton-Burnett novel, except that the family would be a shark.