Then there’s the Bullingdon Club, which is not particularly secret, David Cameron, George Osbourne and Boris Johnson were all members of and it’s a drinking club. Both of these societies are all male and the Bullingdon Club you have to pay an awful lot of money to join, and then you get to drink fine wine until you are sick.
Then there is another secret society at Oxford call The Assassins and I think they like to try and blow things up like bits of road (laughs).
But then I looked into the more famous secret societies such as the Freemasons. But these ones at Oxford do really exist, or they certainly did, Bullingdon still exists I think.
- And what do you think it’s the reader’s fascination with secret societies books like The Da Vinci Code and Angels & Demons with groups like Opus Dei have all been hugely successful?
Everything from The Secret Seven by Enid Blyton right through to The Da Vinci Code and Harry Potter there’s a secret society in Fight Club; Tyler Durden is the epitome of the perfect male.
I think the fascination, well probably in The Da Vinci Code, it’s the idea of belonging to something that’s shrouded in mystery and power, and they are status symbols I think.
Opus Dei is a very orthodox and strict branch of Catholicism which is quite fascinating to us because it’s so extreme the self flagellation and things like that I suppose it’s fascinating to a person as to why someone would want to belong to it. But the status behind some of them, particularly the male ones they seemed to be very linked to status and power.
- And how does the writing process work for you is it characters first and then plot or does plot come first?
I think it’s probably a bit of both, all three of my novels have very strong female protagonists at the centre and I guess that female is always in my head when I start thinking about the plot because it’s always going to centre around her.
I like a book that drives you on and makes you, seems obvious, want to keep picking it up and so quite often with the plot I will start with the beginning and the end and it’s the middle bit that you have to figure out (laughs).
- You began your career as an actress so why did you leave all that behind?
I started as an actress and then I just decided, what I liked about acting was the adrenaline and the buzz of being on stage but I ended up doing a lot of TV; little bit of things like The Bill and adverts and actually I wasn’t getting that buzz out of it.
Then I realised, after I did an advert for Pringles crisps and they asked me to be witty with a crimped Pringle crisp, I thought I don’t think I can carry on. I was quite serious and would rather have been at the RSC being Juliet than being witty with a Pringles crisp.
I slid into TV production and I realised that I much preferred being behind the camera and I went on to be a TV director for years and years and made a lot of documentaries and travelled around the world meeting lots of different people, which was good basis for wanting to write stories, I was also a journalist as well so writing was part of that as well.
- That leads me into my next question really you have worked in journalism and documentary TV how important is for you to mix all these different projects?
I think it’s a great luxury for me to do so many different things, it’s amazing to be able to make a living from writing books but it’s a very solitarily career, so I do got back and do bits and pieces of TV, I do it for financial reason because I have a family support, but it’s good to have that interaction and team work and not just always be imagining everything, which is obviously what writing is about. So it’s good to have a mix and I hope it helps.
- You juggle all this and motherhood it’s amazing you have time for anything?
(laughs) Well yeah I squeeze it all in, I quote like being busy.
- You mentioned earlier in the interview about looking at Rose and how she feels about leaving her family to go to work, how much is that based on you?
Well actually when I had my first baby that’s when I started concentrating on the writing because I didn’t want to leave him I went and did a creative, although I was already a journalist and writing features for the broadsheets as a freelancer, I went and did a creative writing course because I had started fiction and screenplays but never finished them, mainly because I was working full time.
So I thought if I could get a book published then I could stay at home with the baby and work and I was really lucky that I managed to do that fairly quickly. So that was very important for me to be at home with my kids definitely.
But I do understand Rose that kind of being torn between the two I think that it’s very difficult for women of our generation who have had a career and then kids to reconcile yourself to being at home all the time when you are used to being out and about working.
- Finally what’s next for you?
I’m meant to be writing book four (laughs) which I really have got down to, I do have a deadline. So yeah book four is next, half written of course…not (laughs). Hopefully someone will make a film of Never Tell that would be my dream.
- Is there nothing like that in the pipeline?
It’s literally just come out so I have just been speaking to my agent actually about selling the TV and film rights, not yet but fingers crossed.
FemaleFirst Helen Earnshaw