They’re always worth looking at because they contain surprising nuggets of information you never find anywhere else. Markets too I live in Derbyshire and our nearest town, Chesterfield, has a wonderful weekly flea market whose bookstalls are awash with obscure royal hagiographies long out of print and with titles like Our Noble Young Elizabeth and Queen Mary’s Marvellous Years. Collecting material for The Governess was, of course, the perfect excuse to visit yet more second-hand bookshops. I love them and I never pass one without going in (unless it’s closed!). If I didn’t write novels for a living, I’d run a second-hand bookshop. while lower class legs have a long thigh and a short calf. Apparently upper-class legs have the knee equidistant between the anklebone and pelvis. One very grand editor I worked for asked me if I knew the difference between upper and lower class legs. Now I am.Īny more anecdotes from your years on glossy magazines? I wrote many more comedies after that but I always secretly wanted to write historical fiction. Simply Divine, my first book, was a comedy about a celebrity socialite famous for her newspaper column and the downtrodden hack who actually does all the work. It was great fun, great training for a writer and most of all, an inspiration. This was comic gold, obviously, and over a period of about two years I produced 600 words weekly about the crazy, jet-setting, champagne-fuelled adventures of an aristocratic party girl. On our first meeting she described how her mother was furious with her boyfriend because he had landed his helicopter too near her herbaceous borders and blown all the petals off. She was a celebrity socialite called Tara Palmer-Tomkinson and to cut a long story short I ended up writing the column for her. A new columnist came on board who I was asked to look after. I was a journalist working on the Sunday Times as deputy editor of the ‘Style’ section. When did you first start writing fiction? Wendy on her research, and her next book… The Governess brings her long-buried story to life and shines a completely new and captivating light into the world’s most famous family. Marion Crawford, affectionately known as Crawfie, stood by the side of the royal family for seventeen years through the Abdication, World War II and the glamour of the Coronation, as governess to the little Princesses Elizabeth and Margaret.īut her devotion and loyalty counted for nothing when a perceived betrayal brought everything crashing down. Subscribe to our magazine for more great content Wendy shares an exclusive extract from her sweeping new novel, The Governess, and reveals her tips for aspiring novelists, and the subject of her next book…
0 kommentar(er)
