countryfile.com\/podcast\/jenny-agutter <\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div><\/section>\n\nF<\/span>rom English rose to midwife matriarch, Jenny Agutter has graced our screens since her early teens, appearing in more than 40 films and 50 TV dramas over five decades. Some of her most well-known works have shaped our collective consciousness about our countryside, whether the idyllic Edwardian pastoral setting of The Railway Children <\/em>(1970), the lonely Essex marshes in The Snow Goose <\/em>(1971) or the dark terror of the moors in An American Werewolf in London <\/em>(1981). <\/strong><\/p>\n\nMuch of the work Agutter appears in seems to celebrate the outdoors \u2013 is that a deliberate choice on her part? \u201cIt just happened that way,\u201d she answers frankly. \u201cAn extraordinary privilege of my life is enjoying the places that I\u2019ve been to. <\/span>The <\/em>Riddle <\/em>of <\/em>the <\/em>Sands <\/em>(1979) was on the sea, <\/span>Walkabout <\/em>(1971) \u2013 travelling across Australia was extraordinary. But that\u2019s just a matter of luck, it wasn\u2019t by choice, just luck.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n\nJenny Agutter, aged 26, in The Riddle of the Sands (1979), based on the 1903 novel by Erskine Childers about two British yachtsman caught up in a German plot before the outbreak of the First World War<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\u201cI was always out in the country, going to the sea… those memories sustain one\u201d <\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n\nBorn in Taunton, Somerset in 1952 to a military family, Agutter travelled widely in childhood, spending a great deal of time outdoors. \u201cI feel so spoilt because I was brought up abroad, I was always out in the country, I was going to the sea, I have lots of memories of that. And those memories sustain one.\u201d <\/p>\n\n
At 17, already an established actress, Agutter took the role of Roberta Waterbury in Lionel Jefferies adaptation of E Nesbitt\u2019s The <\/em>Railway <\/em><\/p>\n\nChildren. <\/em>Co-starring Bernard Cribbins and Diana Sheridan, the film became a classic. \u201cIt has a really wonderful life. I still get people approaching me about it. About the film \u2013 not about being an actor, or my role in it \u2013 but about the film and what that meant.\u201d <\/p>\n\nSet in 1905 in Yorkshire, on the Keighley and Worth Valley Railway, the story follows the adventures of three siblings who have been forced to relocate from London with their mother after their father is arrested on suspicion of espionage. The children delight in watching the local railway. What is it about the tale that so captured hearts and minds? <\/p>\n\n
\u201cIt\u2019s seen through the children\u2019s point of view. That\u2019s what Nesbitt did with her story and Lionel managed to create an innocent view of the world,\u201d says Agutter. \u201cWhen the children meet them, Perks and all the characters seem a little bit eccentric and peculiar. It\u2019s the way children would see them \u2013 nothing is quite ordinary. It\u2019s delightful, they had fun with it.\u201d <\/p>\n\n
The location adds its own charm, as steam trains belt through the Yorkshire landscape around Haworth. \u201cIt\u2019s beautiful and idyllic and the simplicity is absolutely lovely. It\u2019s like watching a theatrical piece,\u201d Agutter reflects. <\/p>\n\n
NESBITT\u2019S TRAGEDY <\/span><\/strong><\/h5>\n\nHaving appeared in several iterations of the story over her career \u2013 and recently revisiting the role of Bobby Waterbury in The <\/em>Railway <\/em>Children <\/em>Return <\/em>\u2013 Agutter developed an interest in the book\u2019s author, Edith Nesbitt, who also had a peripatetic childhood after the death of her father, who had been an agricultural chemist. <\/p>\n\n\u201cShe\u2019s a very interesting woman,\u201d Agutter says. \u201cShe loved writing about children\u2026 She puts forward the idea that you should always carry that childish imagination with you, because it\u2019s only that imagination that gets us through times and on to new things.\u201d <\/p>\n\n
Nesbitt relied on her imagination to weather her own personal traumas. Socially minded and generous to those in need, she named her son after the Fabian Society. Tragically, Fabian died aged 16 on the kitchen table after an operation to remove his tonsils. \u201cShe lost him and that was a terrible trauma for her,\u201d says Agutter. \u201cShe probably never forgave herself for it.\u201d <\/p>\n\n
Instead, she says, Nesbitt threw herself into writing, creating the happier outcomes that she longed for. \u201cPeople always talk about \u2018Daddy, my Daddy\u2019 \u2013 the moment where Father comes home,\u201d says Agutter, \u201cbut I\u2019m on the verge of tears even when I think of it, because for <\/p>\n\n
Nesbitt, her father died when she was four years old and could never come home. So I think there was always that wish that somehow father would come home. And in her writing she was able to create that.\u201d <\/p>\n\nSally Thomsett as Phyllis and Jenny Agutter as Roberta, with Bernard Cribbins as Perks in The Railway Children, 1970 <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\u201cYou get hit by the elements in Cornwall but you enjoy them\u201d<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n\nPLAYFUL NATURE <\/span><\/strong><\/h5>\n\nNesbitt\u2019s writing also captures the freedom children find in the outdoors, an experience that Agutter believes should be available to all. Her sense that nature is a crucial playground for youngsters led her to becoming a patron of the charity Go Beyond, which offers children who have experienced hardship the opportunity to escape into nature. <\/p>\n\n
\u201cIt\u2019s a simple idea but it makes a difference to a lot of city children who have had difficult lives. They may be children who have been carers to parents, who have never been away,\u201d she says. \u201cGo Beyond offers the opportunity for children to get away, to be looked after, to play with other children, to discover the countryside and to go away having enjoyed themselves and with some good memories to put down there.\u201d <\/p>\n\n
Agutter felt dismayed during the Covid lockdowns, aware that many people were cooped up without access to the outdoors. \u201cThe Covid years have been frightful. I was in the country, so I could get outside, but I really felt for people in the city, who were entirely trapped.\u201d <\/p>\n\n
It was that deprivation that led people to recognise how important nature is to our lives, <\/p>\n\n
Jenny Agutter waves from a train at Oakworth Station, West Yorkshire at the launch of The Railway Children Return, mirroring a pose from the original film<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\nWILD DRAMA <\/span><\/strong><\/h5>\n\nOf course, nature isn\u2019t always as beautiful and gentle as we might wish it to be. When I remark that many of Jenny\u2019s films express the wonder of the great outdoors, she laughingly interjects \u201cNot American <\/em>Werewolf <\/em>in <\/em>London!\u201d <\/em><\/p>\n\nIt\u2019s a good point. This classic horror opens with two American hitchhikers crossing the Yorkshire Moors (in fact filmed on the road from Capel-y-Ffin to Hay-on-Wye in the Black Mountains). The setting is darkly disturbing and the local pub full of unnerving characters. Not to mention the vicious beast roaming the moors. It makes for a comic-yet-unsettling depiction of our deep-seated fears of the wild at night, and the wild in us all. <\/p>\n\n
There is, of course, something inherently dramatic about the wild, which clearly appeals to Agutter. Her favourite countryside species, she says, is \u201cthe beast of Bodmin!\u201d and says she is drawn to the landscapes of New Zealand and Iceland, because \u201cboth have this feeling about them that things could erupt and change\u201d. Her favourite place in Britain is Cornwall, where she has a home, because it is so wild. <\/p>\n\n
\u201cThe thing that touches me is the landscape, the rocks and the sea and the roughness of it. It\u2019s both benign and very difficult. When it\u2019s cold, it\u2019s really cold and you fight against the wind… You get hit by the elements there but you enjoy them, you have a lot of respect for them. And I love the walks, it\u2019s just wonderful to go along the coastal paths, really beautiful.\u201d <\/p>\n\n
On the other hand, when asked for her rural hero, she chooses a rather decorous figure, albeit for high-energy reasons. \u201cI love Jane Austen. I\u2019m always amazed by how much her characters could pack into a day when walking between places in the country. Breakfast here, someone was coming for lunch, tea at so-andso\u2019s house, all of this \u2013 and they were walking!\u201d Given her extraordinary output, Agutter is no slouch herself, for which we can be grateful. Look out for her this year in the new series of Call the Midwife, <\/em>in which she has played Sister Julianne for more than a decade, as season 12 hits our screens. <\/p>\n\n<\/p>\n\n
CAREER HIGHLIGHTS <\/span><\/strong><\/h5>\n\n1970 <\/strong>The Railway Children <\/em><\/p>\n\n1971 <\/strong>Walkabout <\/em><\/p>\n\n1971 <\/strong>The Snow Goose <\/em><\/p>\n\n1976 <\/strong>Logan\u2019s Run <\/em><\/p>\n\n1976 <\/strong>The Eagle Has Landed <\/em><\/p>\n\n1977 <\/strong>Equus <\/em><\/p>\n\n1979 <\/strong>The Riddle of the Sands <\/em><\/p>\n\n1981 <\/strong>Amy <\/em><\/p>\n\n1981 <\/strong>An American Werewolf in London <\/em><\/p>\n\n2012\u201322 <\/strong>Call the Midwife <\/em><\/p>\n\n2022 <\/strong>The Railway Children Return <\/em>she says. \u201cWe realised what a resource it is. People flooded into the parks and to the seaside and out into the country as soon as they could, and hopefully we will always be able to enjoy that. Nature gives us a great deal.\u201d <\/p>\n\n<\/p>\n\n
The Railway Children Return <\/strong><\/em> Jenny Agutter reprises her role as Roberta Waterbury in this 2022 film, available now on digital download, DVD and Blu-Ray. <\/p>\n\n<\/p>\n\n
Actress Jenny Agutter discusses the landscapes of her work, the life of E Nesbitt and elemental thrills 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