Whatever Floats The Boat

The actress on river life, education and not being held hostage by acting.

- Jack Watkins

I’VE interviewed several actors who have waxed lyrical about boats, but never one who lived on one. Step forward or, rather, lower the gangplank, Imogen Stubbs. ‘I grew up on a Dutch sailing barge,’ she points out, welcoming me on board and seating me beside a table piled with books. ‘My dad was in the Navy, although I’m not sure he liked living on water, but my mum did. Unfortunately, boats have a tendency to sink over time and you end up having to replace them. One we lived on after Dad died is now a teashop in Malden.’

Miss Stubbs is understandably reluctant to give away the location, but its mooring is on a river somewhere in South-East England. Although living conditions were on the primitive side on the barges of her childhood, you can’t say that about this number, which is warm and spacious without being flashy.

She and her partner, fellow actor Jonathan Guy Lewis, designed the boat themselves. ‘Because of my past experience, I knew what worked and, with a boat, you have a certain leeway on design. The real pleasure of living here is that, with the rise and fall of the river, you never have the same view out of the window.’

It’s an enviable location, yet not so distracting that it prevented her partner from writing a play that he and Miss Stubbs are about to appear in, as the parents of a teenager facing his exams, called The Be All and End All.

‘It’s part of a trilogy Jonathan is writing called Education, Education, Education,’ she explains. ‘It’s in response to the lunacy of an education system entirely defined by exam results and the pressure, verging on absolute hysteria, now exerted on children from an early age towards getting a top grade.’