INTERVIEW
The novelist on savouring the sights and scents of Yorkshire – and penning the prequel to Chocolat
1 You’ve lived in Yorkshire all your life. How has this land of literary legends shaped your writing?
I don’t think Yorkshire would have as many writers if the scenery wasn’t so inspirational. In West Yorkshire, we have the Brontë moors. On the coast, we have Whitby, capital of the ghost story. My parents and grandparents were born storytellers – they were brilliant at teaching me about our local folklore and industrial history. The more I’ve travelled, though, the more I’ve seen that people are pretty much the same everywhere. The trick to being a writer is to make everyday stories seem surprising.
2 Your most recent novel, Broken Light, is set in Yorkshire. Did you want to evoke a sense of home?
Parts of it are set here, but I wouldn’t describe it as a “Yorkshire” book. I wrote it in 2020, during lockdown, while I was having treatment for breast cancer. It’s a dark, paranoid story about a middle-aged woman who discovers her power.
3 What’s your most “Yorkshire” novel?
That would be Blackberry Wine. It’s a tribute to my paternal grandfather, a coal miner who hated mining and loved gardening. I inherited my love of gardening from him.
4 Tell us about your garden…
It’s part of the Victorian house near Huddersfield that I bought with the proceeds from Blackberry Wine. There are five acres, mostly woodland, with old fruit trees, lawns and a Japanese garden with water features. My grandfather would have loved it. As a child, I was always following him around in his garden. He’d be going “Smell this” and “Taste that” and showing me how to make things from rosehips and wild spinach. I often imagine him pottering around when I’m out there. He’d say, “You made good to get a garden like this.”
5 We know you walk every day. Any favourite haunts?
I often climb Castle Hill, an Iron Age hill fort with a Victorian tower and a view over Huddersfield – it became Red Horse Hill in my Runemarks series of fantasy novels. It’s buzzing with stories. I look at the earthworks and landscape and wonder what it meant to communities over 4,000 years. It’s a great way to get perspective.
6 Chocolat is based in a French village. Do you have a French connection?
I grew up in Barnsley, south Yorkshire. My father is English, but my mother is French. They were both teachers: my mother came over in the 1960s, having met my father in France when he was on a teaching placement. For the first few years of their marriage, they lived in my grandparents’ sweet shop in the mining community of Stainforth: as a baby, I slept under the till. In the school holidays, I’d stay with my maternal grandparents in western France, where confiseries sold chocolates that lo
