Ferney
1. What can you tell our readers about your new novel Ferney?
'Ferney' isn't new but it is being reborn. It was first published in the 1990s and then reprinted many times. Quercus are now publishing it in a new paperback edition as well as a Kindle version and a beautiful limited hardback signed and numbered edition. It is a love story extending over many hundreds of years and woven into the fabric of the English countryside and the dust of history. It concerns a young woman, Gally, married to Mike, who seems to stumble on a derelict cottage in a Somerset village where they are confronted by an old man, Ferney. In the course of their renovation of the old house, Ferney starts to reveal to Gally hints of a long, long love which, in this lifetime, she has utterly forgotten. It leads them in the end to a crisis with a wholly unexpected outcome.
2. The novel is set in Somorset, why did your decide to use this place for your base?
It began with a real house on the outskirts of the real village of Penselwood in Somerset where the story is set. A friend took me to the house which was ivy-covered and derelict. I wanted to buy it and restore it but the remarkable old woman who owned it would not sell. As a consolation I began to weave a story around it and the more research I did, the more I learnt of the remarkable history of that place.
3. Ferney has been compared to the Time Travelller's Wife, so how does this make you feel to have this said about your work?
I had one odd moment when someone suggested I might have borrowed ideas from the Time Traveller's Wife - odd because Ferney appeared some years before TTW and sadly I am no time traveller. I enjoyed TTW to the extent of writing my own log to see if she had got all the time jumps fitting properly (which of course she had) but I have to say I don't really see any strong similarity between the two. TTW revolves entirely around the the peculiarity of the hero's unique 'gift' whereas Ferney is in some ways the opposite of that. Apart from this one huge peculiarity, that they come back, Ferney and Gally live in our own familiar world. They see their own unique gift (if it is a gift and not a curse) as almost banal.
4. The Lives She Left Behind is the follow on book to Ferney, so what can you tell us about this?
I always wanted to know what happened next and there was only one way to find out. Sixteen years has passed in 'book time' and, without giving the game away, there was a lot that happened right at the end of the first book that would need sorting out in the second. In those sixteen years the world has changed a great deal. There is much better instant communication, much more sharing of knowledge, much more monitoring of young people. It is harder now for any young one who is 'different' to avoid scrutiny and remedial action. The second book stands on its own. You don't have to read Ferney first, though I hope and believe that you will want to read it afterwards. It tells the story of how these two people struggle to be with each other in this modern world and the danger that befalls those unfortunate other people who are caught up in their lives.
5. You have written non fiction, historical fiction and thrillers, do you have a preference between them?
I started with four thrillers and that was a learning process for me. It taught me about plot and dialogue but I felt I wanted to move on. I am first of all a story teller and history provides us with some many rich stories and fragments of stories with attractive gaps in between those fragments in which to insert invention. I wrote a history book with my son Ben, The Plot Against Pepys and enjoyed every long moment of that because we unearthed a detective story in forgotten documents which seemed to me to more than match anything one could invent. Novels are my first love but if I ever found another subject for non-fiction as good as that one, I would pick up the phone to Ben (who is currently finishing his first novel) straight away.
6. You used to be a BBC correspondant, so what made you want to write after having a career that was so different?
I had wanted to write since I was five years old. It was just a case of waiting until I felt old enough to have something to say. My job in BBC News took me around the world and put me face to face with extraordinary people in extraordinary places. It gave me great lessons in what makes people tick and what they do in tight situations. I wouldn't have missed it for the world but I knew when it was time to stop and get on with fulfilling my long ambition.
7. Who do you most like to read in your spare time?
I have just finished Hilary Mantel's 'Bring up the Bodies' with huge enjoyment. It is a fitting sequel to 'Wolf Hall' which is the book I would most like to have written myself. I read a wide range of books, a vast amount of obscure non-fiction when I am researching, in between I read Dickens, Hardy and the classics broken up by modern writers such as Cormac McCarthy, Elmore Leonard for the crisp dialogue. A Kindle helps so much. I can carry a book for every mood. No, I haven't read Fifty Shades...
8. Who would you say have been your main influences in your own writing?
There's always a teacher in there somewhere, isn't there? For me there were two English teachers at my school. A blunt Yorkshire genius called Donald Bancroft who made me write in imitation of great poets and novelists in order to appreciate the subtleties of their achievements. The other was a maverick called Dave True who fed me surreptitious new novels that were way, way off the syllabus. Catch 22 and A Canticle for Leibowitz were among them and opened up my horizons. Dave fell foul of the school which was far too traditional to tolerate that and was, I later learnt, pushed out - very Dead Poets Society. Another is an oral story teller, Clive Fairweather who has held my spell-bound on many occasions and in the process taught me a great deal about how to coax the reader into swallowing the hook for sentence after sentence after sentence.
9. You attend a lot of literary festivals, some of which are not long off in October, so how important are these to writers?
I like them because they bring me face to face with real readers and I hear real responses to what I have put down on the page in the silence of my room. I love speaking in a crowded hall where you can sense the audience's responses to everything you say in a very direct way. Yes, you get the same old questions sometimes but most of the time you get surprising and clever questions which make you think hard. In some ways I have found out at least as much about Ferney from its readers as I knew about it myself. Many people have found very individual and personal connections with the book. Some of those have surprised me but all have fascinated me.
10. What is in store for you after The Lives She Left Behind?
The next book. I am just finishing a huge amount of research and beginning to write. It will come out in 2014, a hundred years on from the outbreak of the First World War and it is an obscure and remarkable activity within that war that has given me the foothold for my story. It is a little too early to say more but I am greatly looking forward to the next few months of writing.
Female First Lucy Walton