When I was writing The Englishman, and thought about what my heroine, Kaisa, was really like, the very first character that came to my mind was Katie played by Barbara Streisand in The Way We Were. (It is one of my all-time favourite films and I cry every time I watch it.) How Katie felt about Hubbell (Robert Redford) seemed to completely mirror Kaisa's intense love for Peter. The plot of the film was also similar to mine: just like Kaisa and Peter, Katie and Hubble have completely different backgrounds; they too first meet fleetingly; and the politics of the day interfere more than once in their relationship. When they first end up together, Robert Redford is in the Navy and looking the best any man could in a naval uniform (apart from the Englishman obviously), although blindingly drunk at a cocktail party. See how there similarities are endless? Plus, and this is a big plus, Kaisa studies Political Science and as the romance with Peter gets more serious, she turns increasingly politically righteous…spooky?
Here's a short excerpt where the Way We Were is mentioned in The Englishman:
Kaisa realised she’d never felt like this before. This was love. The stuff she’d read about in books since she was a teenager; the films she’d watched. This was how Ryan O’Neal felt about Ali MacGraw in Love Story, and Barbara Streisand about Robert Redford in The Way We Were. Kaisa grinned. She’d wanted to pose the same question to the Englishman that Katie did to Hubbell, ‘Do you smile ALL the time?’
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