Sarah Vaughan on Based on a True Story

In this episode, I’m joined by bestselling author Sarah Vaughan to discuss her brilliant new novel, Based on a True Story. We explore the themes at the heart of the book, including power, family dynamics, and the secrets that lie beneath carefully constructed lives.

Sarah shares insights into her writing process and inspirations, revealing how her background in journalism continues to shape her fiction. We also talk about the impact of Anatomy of a Scandal and its journey to the screen and of course the five books that have shaped her life.

📚 By Sarah Vaughan

• Based on a True Story
• Anatomy of a Scandal
• Reputation
• Little Disasters

✨ Books Mentioned

Fantastic Mr Fox by Roald Dahl

Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte

And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie

Pride & Prejudice by Jane Austen

Bring up the Bodies by Hilary Mantel

I’ll be back next week with another author conversation, and I’d love for you to join me for that too.

In the meantime, if you’ve enjoyed this episode, please subscribe, rate, and review Best Book Forward, and don’t forget to tell your friends... it really helps new listeners discover the show.

See you tomorrow, and happy listening.

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https://best-book-forward.captivate.fm/listen

To stay in touch with Best Book Forward news please follow me on Instagram @bestbookforward or visit my website: https://bestbookforward.org/

Foreign.

Welcome back to Best Book Forward.

I'm your host, Helen, and this is the podcast where I talk to authors about the books that have shaped their lives.

I'm pretty sure you know the drill by now, but it's basically like a bookish version of Desert Island Discs.

Before we get started, I've got a small favour to ask.

If you're enjoying the show, I'd be so grateful if you could hit the song subscribe button wherever you're listening to this.

It makes a huge difference in getting the show to new listeners and it would mean the world to me.

Today, I'm delighted to be joined by international best selling author Sarah Vaughan.

Sarah is the Sunday Times best selling author of Anatomy of a Scandal, Little Disasters and Reputation.

And Anatomy of a Scandal became a global number one Netflix series which has watched for over 200 million hours in its first first month.

Before writing fiction, Sarah spent 15 years as a journalist, including more than a decade at the Guardian, and this experience informs her powerful, thought provoking thrillers.

Sarah joins me today to talk about her latest novel, Based on a True Story, which is a brilliant and compelling read.

The novel centres on Dame Eleanor Kingman, a beloved and famous children's author preparing for an extravagant 70th birthday celebration.

As guests begin to arrive, bringing secrets from the past with them, Eleanor becomes increasingly unsettled by a series of anonymous emails threatening to expose the truth about her mysterious past.

In today's episode, we'll be talking about the inspiration behind Based on a True Story, Sarah's writing process and her experience of seeing her work adapted for the screen.

And of course, later in the show we'll also talk about the books that have shaped her life.

So let's get straight into it and give Sarah a warm welcome to the show.

Sarah, welcome, and thank you so much for joining me on Best Book Forward today.

So lovely to be here.

We've just had a lovely chat actually before we've come on, we've sort of talked about everything, but we're here to talk today about your new novel, Based on a True Story, which is which is out now in hardback.

I love the COVID also love the title as well.

It's a really great title.

But do you want to start off by telling everyone what it's all about?

Based on Our True Story is a psychological drama about power, money, lies and family narratives.

It starts with a body found on a storm lash north Cornwall Beach.

Dame Eleanor Kingman is a famous children's author and she's gathered together her family and friends to celebrate her 70th birthday party and her latest number one bestseller.

But somebody has been sending her emails threatening to expose something that happened 50 years ago, which is a narrative she's built around herself.

Can she sort of unearth him or her and maintain the fiction on which her legacy and her multimillion pound career depends?

It is so brilliant.

It's such a great opening as well.

I just said to you, it's one of those books that I was like, just one more chapter.

Just one more chapter, like, throughout, and I couldn't put it down.

It is brilliant.

So should we go back to the beginning then, and find out where that initial spark came from?

What was the moment that set this novel in motion for you?

Well, I suppose I've always.

I realized I like writing about power and I like writing about social mobility and power dynamics, whether that's, you know, abuse of power in Anatomy of a Scandal or, I guess, Reputation or, you know, judgment that's made in Little Disasters.

But I'd written three quite dark psychological thrillers, Anatomy of Scandal, Little Disasters and Reputation.

And we'd all gone through the pandemic and we'd all also experienced, you know, Russia invading Ukraine.

This is before Gaza, but, you know, the world was feeling really quite dark.

And I think there's a feeling that people were wanting to read books that were a little bit more escaping.

So I very consciously wanted to write a sort of Christie for the Instagram age.

A closed, metaphorical.

Metaphorical closed room murder set in a really beautiful setting, still with vibrant characters and still exploring power, but within a family setting.

And I realized that I'd written a lot about motherhood, apart from Anatomy.

All of my books have got sort of touch on motherhood, obviously really overtly and Little Disasters, but also Reputation and my first and second novels as well, which are women's fiction.

But I'd never really written about siblings at all.

And I'd watch this book, it's kind of a feminized King Lear.

And I'd watch Succession, which is obviously based on Lear and the Murdochs, but has a patriarch as a main character.

And I thought about what about if I make.

If I make it as a female character, you know, a mother and her three daughters.

And what if I sort of slightly subvert the three daughters so that the Gonerilla and Regan figures are actually good daughters, dutiful older daughters, and maybe the Delia or Cordelia or Delia figure as she is a.

This is perhaps a little bit more subversive, a bit more of a sort of typical spoiled third child, you know, indulged their child.

So really it was a combination of that.

And I've also always been fascinated in children's authors.

So when I was coming to think of, I really like writing about strong women.

So I've got, in anatomy, I've got, you know, a barrister, Kate Woodcraft in Little Disasters, I had a pediatrician in Reputation, I have a female Labour mp.

So I wanted another really strong, successful woman and I thought, and an older woman.

And, yeah, my fascination with children's authors kind of fed into thinking, oh, actually she could have.

She could have built a big literary empire by being a very successful children's author.

So those were all the different strands that came together.

I love that we're going to talk about sisters.

We'll talk about children's authors as well later.

I think that's so interesting, what you just said about, like the sort of Christie for the Instagram age, because without sort of realizing until you said it, there's been a few sort of thrillers recently people have said, talk to me about.

And I was like, oh, it's a bit dark, it's a bit too dark.

And I was like, I think that's what I'm sort of.

I mean, I'm, you know, in outside of thrillers as well.

I am definitely sort of leaning into the feel good reads as well.

And this is brilliant.

It's such a great mystery.

I didn't show you.

I've been sort of tabbing my way through.

I always do because I always try to work it out and I never do.

So it's kind of me tabbing and just not getting it anyway, so bless my heart for trying.

So I said to you before, this was the first of your novels that I've read.

I don't know where I've been, but I now have the absolute exciting position to be in.

I get to go and experience them all for the first time.

I love how you blend the sort of psychological tension and it's like a drama of this family and exploration into their power and secrets and it sort of the way it unfolds.

I really felt like I was there in some sort of way with the family and sort of watching it myself.

You use a lot of points of views as well.

And again, I think what you did brilliantly is the pacing and the switching.

So as a reader, I knew who was who, where I was going, but I think that sort of fed into that, me not being able to put it down.

So how do you go about structuring when you've got all these different voices, you've got secrets and everything.

How do you strike structure your book and plan it to keep it so it does move through at that pace?

Oh, but I think a lot of it comes in the editing because I find structure tricky.

But I think I've.

Interesting you said that about points of view.

I think I've always written from a lot of points of view.

So my debut novel, which I had, you know, I'd never read a book on how you, how you write has got six different points of view.

You know, I was being ambitious of my first novel without really realizing it.

And I think I'm.

I've always thought, gosh, I would love to write a first person present tense, you know, all the way through one narrator.

But I've never been able to limit myself.

I'm quite an indecisive person.

I've never been able to limit myself to one person's perspective or understand how you know in a mystery.

You couldn't possibly know what was, was going on if you're just doing it from a very narrow point of view.

So I've always written from lots of different points of view and I hadn't actually realized that that's something TV really likes, you know.

So that's, I think, why my books have been translated.

I've had two TV adaptations and another one being developed at the moment.

So it's because stories are told from lots of different angles, from lots of different viewpoints, from lots of different cameras, so to speak.

So sorry, but going back to the pacing question, I suppose I, I don't plot all the way through at all.

I wish somebody was telling me on a podcast last week about someone who does an Excel sheet with.

I think actually Licky Smith might do this with different cells and color and they know exactly what's happening.

But I, I can't do that because I don't know how to do an Excel spreadsheet and I've never been able to make it work the, the tabs properly.

I do have a lot of post its lying around, you know, so I'm sort of trying to write points of view like that.

And on this wall I have a, you know, a wall with lots of different points of view written down.

But I knew what the.

When I started off I had a very clear sense of, you know, who Eleanor is, what's going to happen.

I didn't know every little Bit So I didn't know the exact nature of the past revelation about her, but I knew the final scene and I knew I worked out the characters before I started.

So then I just sort of start and I don't, I don't think, okay, every third chapter is going to be Eleanor because maybe she needs two chapters on the go.

But I tend to alternate different points of view between different chapters.

And I know it seems a bit basic having the name of the character at the start of the chapter, but it somehow enables me to keep tabs on, you know, is everybody getting a balance?

And then I have subplots like Tom, the husband of one of the three sisters, Jilly, Rachel and Delia.

And Jill is single or potentially not by the end.

And Rachel has got a husband and children and Delia is much younger and she's.

She's single too.

But Tom has got himself into a real scrape, hasn't he?

And his subplot enables us to have a sort of a ticking clock and a sense of a chase and a sense of propulsion through that.

So I knew that I wanted to roughly balance the three daughters stories.

Gill is a little less, isn't it?

But Rachel and Delia, we're kind of getting a good sense of that.

So I don't know, I just kind of.

I just get going, you know, I might, I might, I might plot out the first few chapters and then I suppose I get my confidence back.

And then a lot of the pacing I think comes through the edit, you know, and just thinking this is a bit sluggish.

A lot for me will be that I'll have described hedgerows too much.

But yeah, I think just really being conscious all the time.

And I think the post, its help of, you know, the main driver of the story is Eleanor and all the different red herrings that are sort of related to that.

But we've also got the Tom story and we've got, you know, each the sisters.

Sometimes I'll be thinking, oh, I haven't heard from Delia for a while so I'll sort of stick in a Delia chapter.

Or you know, I'm just consciously.

It's like cooking a lovely meal with lots of different saucepans going.

You know, it's kind of trying to get the timing right, isn't it?

And I consciously as well, sorry for pacing and that sort of propulsion.

We'll talk about this, I'm sure but I think I've learned from the TV adaptations that ending on cliffhangers and switching points of view is A way of generating pace and propulsion.

So, you know, I try and.

Try and do that quite a lot.

And I won't drop any spoilers.

But Tom's story.

Oh, if I had a blood pressure monitor on, because.

Particularly because, like Eleanor's dog as well, I was like, you had me very stressed.

Everyone's very stressed about the dog.

I have a cockapoo slumbering at my feet here who I feel I should get her food on, tax deducted or something, the amount that she.

That she fed into this.

But my mum sent me a text last night.

I only sent her the book, you know, for publication.

And she said, I'm a third of the way through and I can't breathe.

And I looked at where a third of the way through is, and it is where there is a meeting with the dog on the cliff.

Oh, yeah, That's a bit of a tense.

And I remember my sister sending me a text saying, I'm very worried about Edith.

That's the name, the dog named after Enos.

But.

And let's talk about Eleanor then, because I thought she was such a great character.

Really interesting, very compelling to read as well.

So she's this famous children's author.

She's about to celebrate her 70th birthday.

So I found it really interesting reading her because it got me thinking about children's authors as well, and how it sounds so lovely.

They're creating these stories that our children adore.

But quite often around some of the more famous children's authors, there's elements of darkness and sort of stories around that sort of make them not the sweetness and light that we might imagine from seeing them on the page.

As I was reading Eleanor, I was really thinking about Enid Blyton as well.

She was obviously a mother as well.

Her children sort of relationships has been talked about.

So it made me wonder then, was Eleanor based on somebody or she completely your own creation?

Yeah, children's authors were a huge inspiration and.

And you're right, Blyton as well.

I think she had three daughters and I think I'd seen a documentary, and I subsequently read a memoir by one of her.

This was years ago, by one of her daughters.

And they talked about how she would have these sort of tea parties for chosen readers.

And, you know, she would be terribly charming and gorgeous, and then she would be really vile to her own daughters.

So there was this real disconnect between the public image and the private reality.

And I'd also been really conscious of the child.

I've gone to the Dartmouth Bookshop from Devon, the Dartmouth bookshop of Christopher Milne, who is Christopher Rob.

He's dead now.

Christopher Robin, A.A. mill's son.

I'm being told by my dad, you mustn't mention.

It's like saying, don't mention the war, isn't it?

Faulty towers, you know, it's kind of don't mention his.

That he's Christopher Robin.

So of course I.

Where's Christopher Robin as a 8 year old child or whatever.

And I've since read the Enchanted Places, which is Christopher Milne's memoir in which he talks as well about how difficult it was, you know, that he was kind of preserved as this child with a pudding base and a haircut and a smock and his.

And then he went off to, you know, I think his mother wanted him to be a girl.

So he was dressed almost like a girl.

I think it might have been she'd had a miscarriage or a stillbirth before him, I think something like that.

And he would, you know, preserved as this young child and these e. You know, the E. Shepherd.

Shepherd line drawings.

You know, he was really preserved that charm.

And obviously had to go off to a public boarding school and, you know, be this Christopher Robin.

Can you imagine how embarrassing that was?

And, and.

But also his father, you know, kind of.

I think there was a different sort of relationship there of a similar sort of era, you know, golden age of literature to children's literature.

There was two.

There's also Kenneth Graham and Alice Nutley and both of their sons, I think certainly in Kenneth Graham's case was an only child, died by suicide when they were in their early 20s.

So, you know, there's this real history, I think, or of.

Or there was this real awareness of children, of children's or very famous children's authors who'd been really quite troubled.

And I just thought that was really fascinating.

I think all crime fiction and certainly all psychological suspense explores the disconnect between appearance in reality and, you know, the dark secrets underneath and the image that's, you know, portrayed.

And I just thought that was really worth exploring.

I also think to bring it to the present day, we're going to have a real issue with all these influencers who are curating their lives on Instagram and deploying their children and, you know, earning hundreds of thousands of pounds by dressing their kids in matching outfits or whatever.

And you know, I do think going forward there's going to be real lawsuits brought about, consent, you know, because these children are being monetized and depicted in this very idealized Curated way.

And you know, quite clearly children don't always run around in frilly dresses or, you know, matching pajama sets.

You know, they're visceral and angry and lively and competitive and you know, children are not.

I've got two children, I've got lovely children, but you know, they are not just as they're presented on Instagram page, are they?

So I think that's a, that's a different sort of parallel which I don't quite explore here.

Although Delia, the third daughter, is, is a influencer, there's a bit where she tries to catch her mother and put her on a reel and Eleanor says, you know, she doesn't want anything to do with that.

You know, delete that now.

She doesn't want to be curated on an Instagram feed.

So that's just a little bit of a hint of it.

But yes.

So the children.

Going back to the children's author's question, I was just really fascinated that, you know, who gets to tell the story is a kind of, you know, a trope of this, I guess.

And Delia is trying to tell a different story, but Eleanor, the mother has created these whole narratives with her fictitious, her two fictitious theories.

One about Fox cuffs and one about a neurodivergent child detective.

But the Jess, the eight year old character is, was inspired by Delia as the little girl.

So yeah, I was really interested with playing with that.

It's so interesting what you've just said.

I hadn't even thought about that.

I mean, I've thought about it, you know, before children on social media, but in this sort of context as well, because it is the same thing.

You know, Delia is sort of the inspiration to this character and she's sort of, you know, forever going to sort of carry that with her.

So it's her sort of side of being portrayed like that as well with Eleanor.

And be very careful, sort of the spoiler territory.

It makes me wonder as well.

I mean, you see sort of why Eleanor is the way she is as we sort of uncover some of the secrets.

Yeah.

That happened.

And it makes me sort of wonder was part of her and part of some of these children's authors who tell these beautiful stories but have a sort of darkness.

Is it their way of wanting to sort of escape the things that, you know, trouble them as well?

Yeah.

So I mean, I, I think I end based on true story.

There's some quote about based on a true story, but made more affecting, more gripping.

It's something there's Some line about, you know, isn't that what everyone tries to, to do to rewrite their story and that.

I think, you know, you're probably not meant to therapize as you write or, you know, work through things, but I think you certainly do.

And Eleanor is clearly trying to control the narrative.

I mean, we talked about puzzles and Christie for the Instagram age and I think that that's why stories like this or Lucy Foley's stories are so successful at the moment, because they allow you to have a resolution and a neatness in a world in which there isn't that neatness at the moment.

I think that's why as well, Christie is, you know, so enduring because, well, she's brilliant at plot and actually I think, you know, Marple is very, very clever.

You know, the psychological characterization there as well, but it allows for, for a closure and a, and a neatness and a tying together of threads that we're not necessarily getting in, in real life at the moment.

So I think that's why people are drawn to.

Well, that's probably why people are drawn to cosy crime.

I'm not saying this isn't like that and Lucy Foley's work's not like that either.

But you know that we can have darkness, but we can all have it neatly resolved at the end.

I was just trying to sort of draw back my feeling of how I felt when I finished.

I was like, I do remember feeling like satisfied with it.

It was like everything sort of, yeah, it's just, yes, there's a murder, so it's not, not dark.

You know, things happen.

But I did have that sort of feeling of just sort of satisfied and, you know, I really enjoyed it all.

So Eleanor is, she's a really interesting character and I sort of toyed with.

I'm like, do I like her?

You know, she's, she's got a bit of a narcissist about her is.

But I do feel like I sort of wanted to take my hat off to her as well.

Like I was like, I don't agree with everything you've done or the things, the way you treat people, but there's something about you I kind of admire.

She's a 70 year old woman.

I was like kind of ad you for just, you know, doing it your way.

But I wondered, did you have sympathy for Eleanor when you're, Is she a character that you felt for despite wrongdoings?

Massively.

And I, and I've been quite thrown when people have said she's such a narcissist?

And you know, I've read reviews that said all of the characters are unlike really.

I'm really surprised by her, I think.

Yeah, I mean I think they're all relatable.

I mean I think she is monstrous in some ways but I completely understand why she is like she is.

And I, I love creating her because as I said, I wanted to write another strong woman and I wanted to write because it's a layer.

It was obviously going to be an older woman.

You know, it's based on Lear though I thought actually women of 70 are, you know, who've been successful, have actually had to be quite ruthless I think and have, you know, have had to push against societal expectations a bit and you know, childcare wise it hasn't been that easy for them.

So they've got a grit to them.

My mum's 80 and she's not an Eleanor at all, but she has a.

She's very competent, she's very capable, she gets on with it.

You know, she's a. I think boomers are maligned quite a lot because you know, they have been certainly as millennials or, or you know, Gen Z, they have massively benefited from you know, property price boom and you know, they were the generation that didn't have to go to war and they benefited from free student grants and you know they, they've kind of in certain sexual revolution and all these, these things.

But they've also, they've gone through massive subtle change I think, you know, from being.

There was the moon landing.

But you know, she's, she's a woman who has had to, she's embraced second wave feminism in the 80s.

So she's been reading Fantastic Mr. Fox to her children, which I know we'll get on to and thinking actually I don't want to be, you know, a Mrs. Fox at home cooking the chickens while my husband's doing intrepid things.

And because she's come from a more humble up background and she has escaped that through education and through being bright, she's a real doer, she's really competent and she has realized that to fit around childcare, providing childcare and to manage a sort of career, she's going to sell her short stories to women's magazines.

So while her husband is writing, you know, his literary debut and reviewing for the London Review of Book, she's being very practical.

She's a real go getter and she's just, you know, thinking of what's financially beneficial, what can I fit around?

She's, yeah, she's competent, she's practical, but she's quite driven.

And I.

And in doing.

And in having to be driven, she has had to shear off parts of her past and almost tell herself they don't exist.

To be able to survive, you know, I think we can say to survive a past trauma, she's had to do that.

You'd say if you were psychoanalyzing her, she wouldn't have any truck with psychoanalysis.

But, you know, that is what.

What's going on there.

So I, yeah, I loved creating.

I love creating a very competent older woman who's very sharp, far sharper than, you know, a lot of the men around her who've been.

And who has been a single mother for, you know, quite a period of her life and has just got on with things.

Yeah.

And has lived by her wits, so to speak.

A little.

Yeah, I thought it was.

I thought it was, yeah.

Really refreshing.

Right in the middle.

I am.

Yeah.

She's a great character.

I'm so surprised that people.

I was thinking about characters that I liked in the book.

I don't think they're, you know, they are all flawed, but that's.

I mean, we all are.

Right.

You wouldn't have a birthday party with that many people and it'd be filled like saints.

Everyone's going to have had their moments and their secrets and things and it'd.

Be very boring to read.

It really would be very boring and very boring for you to write as well.

There'll be no jeopardy.

So let's just talk a little bit about the sisters as well.

I'm always drawn to sister stories.

I only have one sister.

We got very well.

But I love, like when there's more than sort of two sisters as well, because it's such an interesting dynamic.

These sisters have their sort of resentments and their rivalries as well, but they're such a great cast of characters.

So how did you find writing them?

And was there one.

One sister in particular that you felt more drawn to than the others?

I loved writing them.

I'm.

I'm a sister.

I'm one of two sisters as well.

I'm an older sister and I get on really well, my sister and the book's dedicated to her, in fact.

And I'm very clear that she is not Delia.

I made her read it before it was sent off so that I could check that nobody would, you know, she wouldn't think that.

But I. I probably have writing TD at the most because I think I was the sort of, you know.

Although I would say that she is in many ways more responsible than me.

She's a teacher and is not a spoiled younger child.

I mean, there's only two of us.

It's not like we've got three.

I have been fascinated, looking at dynamics where you've got three children and I think there is leeway given to the third child.

You know, they just have a more charmed life.

And so I think for that reason, I really love writing Delia because she's quite subversive and she.

It was just a lot of fun to write because she's.

She's more naughty.

But maybe that.

Maybe in the same way that I like writing entitled male characters, like I loved writing James Whitehouse in Anatomy of a Scandal.

His point of view with the easiest to write.

And I really like writing Ned's viewpoint in this as well.

So I think there's.

In the same way that I like writing male viewpoints.

I obviously really like writing Delia's viewpoint, I think, particularly because she was quite naughty.

It gives you an opportunity to explore that space, I think.

So I don't have to be the good girl.

Yeah.

Let's talk about the setting of Based on a True Story.

So it's in Cornwall.

I love Cornwall.

I always think of it as such a happy and beautiful place, but it really lends itself so perfectly to thrillers and mysteries.

I know this is the second time you've written about Cornwall, so what is it for you, Sarah, that that makes you want to bring your murder to Cornwall?

Well, I think just practically Cornwall is a great place to have a death because you've got high cliffs, you've got tides that might impact on things.

You've got phone signals that probably don't work, you know, which literally is an issue on bits of cliffs.

So, you know, and the difficulty of getting somewhere in time.

So sort of practically and geographically, it's good for murder, so to speak.

I also think that.

I mean, there's a very strong literary heritage of suspense and murder Mistress down there.

I was really influenced by Du Maurier.

I think I read Jamaica in when I was, you know, 13 or something.

And I've.

I've Gone and deliberately got sort of a bit lost on Bob Mimore.

Not that lost, but, you know, in the mizzle.

To try and get.

Get that sense of suspense with the previous book.

And obviously, Christie.

I mean, we'll talk about this later, but, you know, that.

That's an influence.

She had a house just over the border in Devon, in Greenway, and, you know, she's.

And then there were none.

I know that's in Devon, but, you know, that's everybody traveling down to an island set off there.

I think the sense that it's a peninsula, certainly growing up down there, I felt very cut off from the rest of the country.

You are quite isolated on a.

On a.

On a Cornish cliff.

And a sense that maybe you can get away with things that you wouldn't be able to get away with otherwise.

And.

And then the sort of pathetic fallacy, you know, is a great way of creating tension by describing, you know, waves lashing against the cliffs or, you know, the wind building or, you know, I was very conscious that I knew it had to start with a.

Or conclude.

But we'll have it a little bit in the.

In the prologue with a storm, because Lear rages on a storm on the heath.

So I wanted to have the elements.

I mean, it's very elemental down there.

I think that's a line in the book which says that I. I know from growing up in neighboring Devon and spending all my childhood holidays in Cornwall that, you know, you can be in a field and there will be rain clouds and thunder and rain you'll literally see coming down.

You'll have a rainbow and sunshine on the other side of the field.

I've been in fields on the edge of a cliff where that's happened, where you've.

You've got, you know, gray clouds and rain coming down and brilliant sunshine on the other side.

So.

And there's that.

That line about, you know, four seasons in an hour, your four seasons in a day you can have down there, you know, because you've got such extremes of temperature.

So it's a place of ext.

Means.

I think it's a place of extreme beauty.

Just, you know, a place of sort of extreme danger, but in a.

In a sanitized way.

You're not.

You know, it's not like you're in the Arctic or something.

You know, you.

You have still got a village down the road or, you know, the police will turn up eventually, although they don't really till the end here.

But, yeah, so it's.

I think it's just a Brilliant.

There is a reason that people, not just me, Hannah Richell set of brilliant mystery down or crime psychological space down there.

And there is a reason that people are drawn to North Cornwall, I think, particularly, or West Cornwall.

Yeah.

It just sets itself so brilliantly in this book as well.

It's just fabulous.

And it's so visual as well.

It's almost a character.

I always think it's a character, really.

Yeah.

So looking at that sort of visual side, we have to talk about your adaptation.

So you've had two of your books adapted to screen and one is in the making and based on a true story.

Really needs to follow suit because this would be a great one to watch.

So could you tell us, how has that been for you to see your work translated onto screen?

What's it been like?

Well, there's no downside.

I was.

I've been really.

Both Anatomy of the Scandal and Little Disasters have been made into TV series.

I'm really pleased with both of them, largely because they were so true to the.

The tone and the themes of the.

Of both novels.

TV eats plot, so requires more plot.

Both of them required a little bit more plot.

Anatomy in particular was.

Was really, really faithful.

I mean, there were.

The Sienna Miller Sophie character has.

Has more to do in the show than she does in the book, which I think was a real positive, actually.

And there are some twists and turns that I think, oh, I really wish I'd thought of that.

And the same with Little Disasters.

The Little Disasters, the book there is a quartet of mothers, but two of them are more important than the others and they're still more important in the show.

But the life stories of the other two are built up and the villain is changed in Little Disasters.

And as soon as that happened, I was like, that makes complete sense.

That is so good.

That is so much better.

So it's actually been quite liberating to see the shows obviously meet a far larger audience.

I mean, Anatomy of Scandal was watched for 200 million hours in the first four weeks alone.

It was a global number one hit.

It was like, you know, in 81 countries.

I think it was in the top 10 or whatever.

And yeah, so obviously it reaches an audience that's far exceeds readers of a book.

And because both Little Disasters and NATO of the Scandal were about themes that were really, really important to me.

So Anatomy of a Scandal is about consent, really entitlement.

And I realized in writing it, the book, that I was kind of working through a sexual assault I'd experienced in my early 20s and little disasters is about maternal mental health and judgment.

And equally as when I finished the first draft, I realized I sort of worked through an experience of something called perinatal ocd, which I had after my second child.

So both of them are very, very.

They're the books that I guess are closest that I've shared the most of myself in.

And so there is something incredible about knowing that that story, which I suppose has been bought, both of them have been born from, you know, the dark, some of the darkest moments of my life, has been translated onto the big, big screen or the TV screen and has reached so many people.

And the best thing about both of them being made is the messages that I've had from viewers.

So I've come off Twitter now, but.

But I was on it when X.

When Anatomy came out, and I was getting so many messages from women.

Some women I knew, but largely like women.

All you get messages from South Africa and, you know, Kenya, and, you know, women who were saying to me, that was my experience.

Or, you know, I realized.

I've realized I've been raped 10 times or, you know, I mean, horrific, or, you know, people who said I was, you know, I was a complainant in a.

A rape trial, and this was exactly my experience, or, you know, it never actually came to trial, but this was.

This was how I felt, you know, and so that it sounds cliched, but I think I write for that sort of emotional connection that only the enforcer said only connect, you know, and this has been a very effective way of doing that, of knowing that my story has kind of reached all those people equally with little stars, which is about.

At the time, I called it maternal ocd.

Now they call it perinatal ocd, which is a specific kind of OCD that comes about surrounding childbirth and often happens after a traumatic birth or a traumatic pregnancy, which I had.

And I've had people messaging me saying, I didn't realize that this was a thing I've been able to go on.

I've looked in the back of your book or I've looked on the.

You know, I've read an article, you know, you've.

You've written, and I've Googled it, and I've shown it to the website, to my husband or my child, and I've explained what it was like, or, you know, nobody's understood quite what I was going through, my family, until I've shown them this or, you know, and that.

That has been really incredible.

That's been a really incredible way of connecting with people.

I mean, you know, I think you write to entertain and to.

To.

To tell a story, but I also try and write to.

To provoke thought.

Not just to entertain, but to.

To touch people, I guess.

That's so interesting.

I just want to go back to what you were saying about finding the courage to share your stories of things that have been very traumatic in your past.

I always say, I think, you know, reading, yes, it is for entertainment and to relax, but also to see yourself as well, and experiences, but also to understand other people's experiences.

So the fact that you've shared that and that people are reaching out and contacting you, you know, that's changing people's lives.

I think it's probably making people seek help or sort of come to terms with what's happened.

So I think that's really important.

And hopefully then being translated onto screen as well.

It's another audience who will sort of come to understand that.

Oh, thank you.

Although I think Based on a True Story is probably lighter.

I don't.

I was.

I don't have a. I don't have the issue that Tom has, for instance.

Instance or, you know, I mean, it was quite research light, which was quite liberating.

But, yeah, I do think I'd.

I would like my books to sort of touch people and make them think.

I think the stuff, the books that stay with you are the ones that make you think, aren't they that provocative or that touch you in some way?

Yeah, I think there's a place for all of them, isn't there?

Sometimes I do just want to just fly through something.

So Based on a True Story is out now.

It's in hardback.

It's a brilliant read.

It's one I would highly recommend.

So do go and pick it up and enjoy.

Okay, Sarah, we're going to talk about the books that you've picked, but before we do, just to remind listeners that all of the books that we talk about will be linked in the show notes.

They're nice and easy for them to find.

So you sent me this brilliant email with your five books, which I just loved reading.

I can see you've taken this very seriously.

So how did you find choosing your five books?

I really loved it, actually.

I. I thought it was such a.

No, I like you.

I love Desert Island Discs and I thought it was such a clever way of getting a sense of a person and influences.

But I took it very seriously.

As in, I took.

I took the thing about the, you know, what are the five books that have shaped you as a Writer, I think he said, all right, Shakes a reader.

So actually they start quite young in childhood and they.

And I realized that the themes that I explore in my fiction about power, family, relationships, strong women kind of living by their wits and, you know, making their way in the world through that, perhaps overcoming misogyny or sexism in doing so.

Suspense, the importance of Cornwall and, you know, or atmospheric settings, resolution of a mystery, Machiavelli and power plays.

All of these things are actually encompassed in these five books.

And I tried to sniff, just wriggle a couple of extra references in, but yeah, so I love doing it and it really made me.

It really made me consolidate, you know, my thoughts about what my own writing and what my own writing is.

So let's get started then and hear about book number.

Number one.

What did you pick?

So the first book I put down is fantastic Mr.

Box.

And this is actually really relevant to based on a true story.

But it's.

I have a very, very strong memory of being.

And this is also relevant to.

Based on true story of being read to by my dad.

We're really lucky.

And our parents read to us.

But as my mum would say, she would be the one who would be cooking the dinner while he was, you know, getting the nice bit of parenting, which was reading to us in bed.

And I remember very clearly him reading Roald Dahl to us.

In fact, I've got a very strong memory of Danny the Champion as well.

So much so that when I reread, when I read and a lot of the books that I read as children, as a child didn't translate to me then reading them to my children, you know, they were.

They seemed quite old fashioned but dull, kind of does translate.

And I think I can remember reading Fantastic Mr. Fox to my children and having this sort of Pavlovian response of crying because I could remember that experience of my father doing it as well.

And fantastic Mr. Fox is.

He's swashbuckling.

He's, you know, he, he's on a quest, doesn't he?

His quest is to dig these tunnels and get these duck and goose and chicken from the Borgus Bunsen bee.

These sort of, you know, the antagonists who are these sort of, you know, rich farmers who he's going to outwit.

And he takes his kids, certainly the boys, I think the older boy foxes golf and do these intrepid things with him.

And Mrs. Fox is.

They're sending, he's sending the youngest fox back with, you know, the chickens and things for Mrs. Fox to cook cook this banquet.

And I remember as a child even then thinking, you know, my mum was Greenham Common and, you know, was feminist.

And I remember thinking, why is Mrs. Fox at home?

And there's this awfully patronizing limo and stuff or something like, you know, your mother is a marvelous woman or, you know, something.

There's a real sort of, you know.

But she's in her place in the kitchen.

And Eleanor in.

In my book, is reading to her kids in the 80s and really realizing that she needs to.

She wants to write and she wants.

She's going to have to write children's stories because it's going to fit around what's, you know, she hasn't got time to write a literary novel.

She has to do something that she can do alongside bringing up her children.

And she thinks, you know, she's irritated with the sort of casual sexism of.

We might go even further than that now, of Dahl.

And so she wants to write a feminine.

So she writes a Frieda the Fox, who is a single mother, who's a vixen, who is.

We don't see much detail of it, but she protects her fox cubs.

And so, you know, that's.

That's where the Frieda the Fox.

The Fox Cub series comes, which is one of the books.

That's one of the series that's made her immensely wealthy.

Problematic.

They.

Dahl, obviously, where it was.

We can see now, you know, his actual storytelling in Fantastic.

Mr. Fox spoke to me as a child, obviously spoke to my children and was a big influence, I think, in my writing.

My mum reading it to my brother and I and just loving it, thinking it was so.

About the sort of sexism.

But my mum was a single mum, so I don't know that I would have sort of, you know, seen, you know, she was the one who was reading and cooking to.

Yeah.

Doing everything picked on this show.

Oh, is it?

I think it's so funny because I think he is like.

He would have shaped lots of readers, made people readers, for sure.

I love how it's linked back into your.

Your book as well.

Okay, let's move on to book number two, then.

Sarah.

When I was nine, we moved houses and I was quite a precocious reader and my mum had been given Jane Eyre to read when she was 9, so she decided that I should read Jane Eyre as nine.

I'd gone through all the, you know, I'd long gone through all Laura Inglis Wilder, you know, and I was.

Obviously, I'd outgrown Roald Dahl completely.

I don't think I discovered Judy Bloom by that stage.

So I am.

And I had.

This was in Devon.

So, you know, it was not, not like a pile or anything, but it was a, it was a.

A much bigger house.

And I had the top floor which had two box rooms either side of me.

And then my sister was on the first floor with my parents opposite on the landing my mum slightly, I don't know, slightly hippies or 80s thing.

She put a golden, you know, paper lamps, lampshades.

So the light outside my bedroom had a sun lamp shade.

So it was golden.

And she thought it would be really lovely, like sort of golden sun outside my bedroom.

I unfortunately had read Jane Eyre and although a lot of the.

Loads of the nuance obviously completely bypassed me as a nine year old.

And I probably a bit like Emerald Fennell with, you know, saying Heathcliff is a romantic hero.

I think I thought Rochester was a romantic hero.

The bit that spoke to me and that absolutely terrified me was Bertha Rochester the woman, the mad woman in the attic.

And I was convinced that Bertha Rochester was living in the box room next to me which had a little connecting.

So even if my door was closed, there's a little sort of connecting under the eaves, cupboards and you could crawl.

My sister and I would crawl along the eaves from one room to another and do hide and seek there and things.

So I was convinced that this golden light was the fire and that, you know, there was always a risk every night that Bertha Rochester was going to come out of the.

Her room in the attic and burn me down while my sister was safe on the floor below.

So I think a sense of the gothic, a sense of suspense, you know, a sense of female madness, you know.

When I then went and read English, there is a very famous book of feminist literary criticism called Maddox in the Attic about sort of Victorian and actually for A levels I wrote about Jane Eyre and Wide Sock Soc for my coursework.

You know, Jane Eyre has been quite a, I think a theme of my learning about.

About books.

And when I wrote Little Disasters, which is about perinatal OCD but you know, about mental health surrounding.

Throughout motherhood.

Four mothers have a book club and they discuss Jane Eyre and Jess, my character who's played by Diane Krueger in the show, this wasn't in the show, but she has the bedroom in, you know, on the top Floor.

So that was meant to be.

I was hoping that if people were o with their Jane Eyre they would realize that she was a mad woman in the attic.

So Jane Eyre has.

I was never a Wuthering Heights person.

I was always a Charlotte Bronte.

Having said that, I haven't read Jane Eyre for years so perhaps it's due a rereading and perhaps it won't stand up to my childhood memories, but I was really quite terrified of it.

I just love, I can really picture you.

I just love that you were so traumatized by it.

That's awful.

But isn't it incredible how you know, as a nine year old you were able to pick that up from the page and sort of bring it to, I think children's imaginations.

Oh, my imagination was wild.

Yeah, but it's like the sort of thing if you saw like a coat hanging up on a door or something at night.

Were you one of those kids?

Yeah, I was totally like that as well.

Do you think then when you were sort of reading things like Jane Eyre and having that imagination, were you sort of.

Were you writing as well as a child?

Did you have.

Yeah.

So when I was, When I was 10, I was Devonian writer of the year and I.

So I wrote stories and I actually won the prize.

I wrote, I wrote one sort of women's fiction sort of satire actually on wealthy ladies and.

And then I wrote a mystery and I won this prize which was quite a lot of money.

It was £75 in cash, £50 in book vouchers and a trip to Hodder and Stoughton by.

With my £75 in cash I bought a typewriter and a Roberts radio.

And with my £50 in book vouchers at the time you could get, you know, a puffin book for a pound.

And I bought all the Judy Blooms.

And then my mum who obviously was quite, you know, had read very precociously as a child herself and later became an English teacher, said well okay, you can buy the Judy balloons, but you ought to buy.

I want you to buy some Jane Austen's as well.

And there's.

I bought a leather bound.

On her sort of advice, I bought a leather bound set of Jane Austen's.

And so that was.

That brings me on to my next.

Does that bring on to my next book?

No, you're jumping one.

Oh, I'm jumping one.

Let's jump on and then we'll go back.

Yeah, fine.

So that brought me on to Jane Austen.

I was probably about 13 by the time I actually Started reading her and she is another of my choices, my fourth choice, actually, because I remember having a.

A real sort of epiphany as I read Pride and Prejudice and I.

It was Jane Austen describing Mrs. Bennet and it was the first time I was conscious of the author trying to convey something that wasn't just.

I was the first time I was aware of subtext, basically.

And it was what I'd later go on to realise was, you know, her use of free and direct speech.

So we're in Mrs. Bennet's head.

But the choice of language and the observations that Austin is making is allowing her to be subversive and satirical and sly about her.

And it was a real light bulb moment.

Moment for me.

You know, I was just fascinated by.

I wasn't deconstructing it, you know, I was 12 or 13, but I was just really fascinated by that.

I suppose it was the first time I'd sort of been conscious of satire.

And I think that's.

I think that's a slightly satirical aspect of some of my, you know, depictions of characters and based on a true story.

And I love things like succession and the thick of it and, you know, W1A and all those things.

So I think that, yeah, satire is really important to me.

And I think I went on to say my email as well, that when I went to university, the.

The paper that was my strongest paper, and that, you know, if I'd got a verse, which didn't get.

I wanted to do an M. Phil in this area was sort of 18th century satire.

Sophia.

I love Tom Jones and Fielding and Swift and Pope and Earl of Rochester and all these.

These writers who, you know, I don't read now at all, but I was.

I found it really fascinating the way in which they were playing with language to sort of divert the people they were talking about.

So Austin was my introduction to that.

And I would say Austin also taught me about power dynamics and the importance of agency for a female character because there were these very narrow societal roles they were expected to have.

And, you know, Lizzie Bennet, you know, gets the big house and Mr. Darcy, you know, through her vivaciousness really, doesn't she?

And through her wit and her intellect lizard.

So I think Jane Austen was really important to teach me about that.

But I have jumped one of my books, haven't I?

I've realized that that's okay.

I'm sitting here and I'm grinning and nodding along like a crazy one.

I'm loving this.

I love that you won that prize.

And Then you got your Judy Blooms because we all need.

I got my Judy Blues, unfortunately, because I was quite an academic child.

I can really clearly remember thinking that my imagination had gone, because that wonderful childlike imagination.

I think what happened was, you know, there was a.

There was.

There's a.

Suddenly a lot of pressure at school, isn't there?

You've got.

This is prior to GCSes, but you're outgrowing that child.

You're coming into adolescence.

I was really bullied.

My.

My parents also divorced when I was 13, so my mum was then a single mum from then on on in, which is probably why the.

The reading of Fantastic Mr. Fox, my dad is.

Is so poignant for me.

But.

So I had, you know, sort of big things going on, being badly bullied, you know, changing schools, parents divorcing and throwing myself into my flute playing.

So I did have a sort of creative outlet and I did loads and loads of music, but also academia because, you know, I sort of, you know, realized, I suppose, subconsciously that I could.

I could excel by doing well, you know, academically.

But the thing that went to the side was, was writing.

I just stopped writing and all my creativity went into my six hours of Luke a Day or whatever.

Whatever got me through my adolescence, basically.

And I didn't then start writing fiction until I was 40, when.

When sort of actually life meant that I had to.

I'd been a journalist for several years.

I'd had to take voluntary redundancy because I had a difficult second pregnancy and I couldn't walk.

I then tried freelancing and hated it.

The market had changed.

It was really, really difficult earning any money doing it.

And I had an idea for a book and I.

Sorry, this is a big tangent, but I stood up at my 40th birthday party and someone said, oh, what are you going to do?

I said, oh, I'm going to write a book and sell it within a year.

Which I knew.

Didn't know how to do it, but it was a real now or never moment.

But I think that's so interesting that, you know, it was obviously meant to be for you.

You had that when you were a young girl and you won your prize.

You know, being a writer, the stories were in.

You just needed to find the right time.

But how amazing.

Stand up at your 40th and make that claim and then look where you are now.

Well, I was.

But it was slightly sort of desperation because I'd.

I was a news reporter in the Guardian.

I had to.

With my first child, I had to Stop working in the lobby, which I'd really loved because my husband was also a junior doctor.

So you know, just, it just did not work with rotors and hours and I didn't want to work full time and I couldn't afford nanny.

And then I had a very difficult second pregnancy during which I couldn't walk.

I collapsed in the street when I was 19 weeks pregnant with him.

Had to take the rest of the pregnancy off and then we had to leave London for my husband's job.

So.

So I then had two small children, was on a very strong cocktail of three sort of lots of painkiller a day in chronic pain and a pain.

A consultant said to me, you're absolutely ridiculous if you think you can commute from outside London to London.

I mean, I didn't have enough.

I couldn't make the hours work, I couldn't make the childcare work work.

You know, I couldn't afford the child care and the travel.

It just the option, the option was given to me, you can take one through redundancy and that, you know, people didn't work from home in these debt in those days.

So I took the money and then my 40th coincided with the weekly started reception.

So I'd been, I'd been earning money by writing pieces for Mother and Baby magazine and the occasional feature for the Guardian.

But I had just about enough redundancy money to keep me for a year or keep, you know, out for a year if I didn't buy, you know, I don't know I bought any clothes for six years or something and, and I kind of had this sort of with my husband.

But I said I've got this idea for a book and actually I really think, I really, I'm really excited, I really think I could write.

But I had no idea how that self belief came about because as I said, I hadn't done a creative writing course, I hadn't even read a book, I had to write a book.

And my husband said, well, I think, aren't you meant to get an agent?

So I'd looked in the back of a, of a book of an author I really like who now writes as Eve Chase.

She then wrote to Polly Williams.

I emailed her, I've written 5,000 words.

Can you believe it?

I wrote 5,000 words and said, oh, do you think I should contact your agent?

Basically I wrote a really good email that was a journalist that I could meet deadlines, that I had a really clear sense of where I was going.

I Had a really strong hook and he said, I think maybe write a little bit more.

So when I'd written 28,000 worse, I wrote to my.

Emailed Lizzie Kramer, my agent, and it went through to the flash pile.

And by the time she.

This was in, I think September, my birthday's in September.

And by the time she contacted me at the start of January, I'd written, I think 66,000 words.

And she worked with me and then on.

On various different drafts and we sold it in September in a preamp, six figure preempt.

So, I mean, it's such a fascinating story.

It's brilliant.

I love that.

Well done.

Should we move back then?

So we're going to go back.

No, that's okay.

We're going to move back into book number four then.

So which is.

So I chose.

And then there were none.

Because I.

And I said to you, I could have very easily have chosen du Maurier instead.

You know, at this time I was.

I think we did Jamaica in at school.

And then I read My cousin Rachel and Rebecca.

But I listened to the podcast before this, which was Ruth Ware.

Yeah.

And I know she's chosen my cousin Rachel.

I just have a bit of a shout out to my cousin Rachel.

I'm actually listening to it at the moment as an audiobook and it's read by Luke Thompson, who was the very first James Whitehouse.

So in the audiobook of Anatomy of the Scandal, he is James Whitehouse and he's also Benedict Bridgerton.

So he before he was Benedict Bridgeton, he was James Whitehouse.

And it was one of those when you hear a clip of who you're choosing, you don't always like everybody.

But he was before Rupert Friend, he was my James Whitehouse.

He was brilliant.

And my cousin Rachel is a particularly.

I think it's got 4.8 stars on the audiobook.

He does it particularly well.

Yeah, it's brilliant.

So I'm enjoying listening to the audiobook, but I will not nick his idea.

So as well as listening to Reading Tomorrow, probably a bit before Jamari, I was.

I went into my Christie era and I wasn't interested in Poirot at all.

I found him really.

I mean, of course she's sort of.

She's poking fun at him, but, you know, I found his whole little gray cell stuff incredibly boring and patronizing.

But I loved Miss Marple and at the time the BBC were filming Joan Hickson as Miss Marple in.

In lots of East Devon, near where I live.

So Budley Salterton, which is Where Hilary Mantel lived.

They were doing filming there, so we were all very conscious of.

We would watch Miss Marple and I would find it terrible.

I would lie on the sofa with a cushion in front of me, unable to watch.

You know, I remember watching the Mirror Cracked.

They filmed in Bloody Soldier and that being absolutely terrifying.

But the book I've chosen is.

And Then There Were none, which there is a reason I Googled it and it's.

It sold over 100 million copies.

And it is the thought of as the best, the most successful mystery.

And I deliberately tried to lean into that with Baston True Story, so that.

That idea of people going somewhere remote.

So it's Indian island, isn't it?

Which I think is based on Burr Island.

Christie went to Bur to write it and, you know, I've.

We've holiday quite a lot in the South Hands, particularly, you know, Bantham, opposite Bow island we've stayed at.

And there are lots of characters going down in on the Aisha.

And here gets the train from Paddington.

And I'm consciously trying to give a little bit of a hint at that, that she's sort of been summoned down to this house in Cornwall, just over the border.

But, you know, a bit like.

And Then There Were None.

And what I love so much about and Then There Were none, rereading it recently was a.

You've got.

You know, I think you've got 10.

Although you've got a sort of an omniscient narrator, it sort of ducks into the 10 different points of view of all the characters.

And I think maybe a servant as well.

So, you know, she's not worrying about.

There are too many viewpoints.

She's just going for it.

And.

And each of the characters has got a really realized backstory.

They've all got a reason to be victims, haven't they?

So I just thought that was.

She's so led and she's so brilliant because they've all got.

They've all got perfectly credible reasons to be killed and they've all got distinct voices and, you know, you get a really good sense of their distinct personalities from it.

So.

Have you read it?

No, I haven't.

Yeah.

Oh, my gosh.

Oh, right.

Okay.

You have to.

Have to go away and read that.

But it's really quick.

I mean, I think her books are probably like 60,000 words or something, aren't they?

I mean, they're quite slim.

Okay, let's move on to your fifth book choice, then.

So bring up the Body.

This one is a book that I read as an adult.

And I think I've said in my notes, there are all sort of other things, aren't they?

Like Gatsby and Ripley and Fingersmith and the Secret History and lots of other things I could have chosen.

But this, I think, encapsulates for me, well, two things.

It's Bring up the Bodies by Hilary Mantel, which is the second in her Cromwell trilogy.

I'd obviously read Wolf hall beforehand, but I think Wolf Hall's a little bit less accessible.

I think she consciously tried to make it a little bit more accessible this one.

And this installment is also really good because it culminates in the death of Anne Boleyn.

So there's quite a lot of plot that happens.

And what I think I learned so much about this is it's.

Mantel writes it in a sort of closed third person consciousness, as if you're.

It's.

It's largely all in Cromwell's head.

And you're so seduced by him by having this access to his thoughts, his inner.

Inner consciousness, that I found myself really quite seduced by this character.

He's so vibrant and he's experienced tremendous loss in this.

And you're quite.

You.

You really believe his viewpoint all the way through.

And then you start to realize actually he is this.

Mark this.

He's quite Machiavellian.

And, you know, in the Tudor court, he has got to make power moves and he's actually got to be.

And this comes across really well as well in the BBC adaptation.

He's really got to be watching his back from mercurial Henry viii.

There's this terrific line where he's trying to.

He's been charged with finding the courtiers who are alleged to have had affairs with Amberlynn so that then Amberlynn could have her head chopped off, basically.

So he's got to find the courtiers that he believes have been having an affair with her, who include her own brother.

And there's this quote which is.

Which, because I've been so seduced by him reading comes.

It came almost as a sort of like a visceral sort of blow.

I felt it was a real sort of moment.

So.

So Mantel says he needs guilty men.

So he has found men who are guilty.

They're perhaps not guilty as charged.

I.

They haven't had affairs with.

They haven't necessarily all had.

He thinks they're culpable of something else, which is mocking Woolsey, who is his sort of mentor.

And so he is going to punish them for that.

Brian, even though he knows they're not guilty of the crime that he needs to fit them up for, you know, to.

To ensure that his place at court is still safe.

That was such a critical quotation from it and it really informed.

I was writing Anatomy of the Scandal at the time.

And that quote I've used as an epigraph in the start of that book because it fits with Kate Woodcroft's character.

So you'll have to read the book now.

And so Hilary Mantel will always be really important to me for that.

She's also important to base my true story because I, I love that she told a story whereby she.

When she was in her teens, she went to stay in a place called Ladrum Bay, which is a caravan park in East Devon.

And she.

And it's not particularly smart at all.

And she walked over the cliffs and saw Budley Salterton, which is the very genteel East Devon resort where they filmed the Miss Marple.

You know, it's beautiful Regency architecture and Victorian architecture and pretty cottages.

And she decided she was going to live there one day and she did and she had.

She bought, I think two apartments overlooking the sea right on the seafront.

And whenever I went to.

I've gone to Buddy's office in latter years, I've kind of tried to imagine her writing there and known she's been there, you know, and, and tried sort of via osmosis to sort of, you know, this is.

This is her view.

I'm going to take another video of it.

I was there in November thinking of her and you know, and that story of as a famous author from.

From a working class background, seeing somewhere beautiful and having that aspiration to live there feeds into Eleanor.

So I have Eleanor walking at 19 and sees this beautiful house at 19 and vows she's going to live there.

And then at 70, she's able to purchase it.

So there's a little bit of Hilary Mantel in Basement Story as well.

I love that.

I love how you've linked it.

You've also given me hope because I have tried Wolf Hall, I think three times and I just get so like muddled with it that I'm like, yeah, I don't know what to do.

So do you think I could skip forward then?

I think you could if you watch some of the TV series.

Yeah, I think, I think the characters of the.

Are very difficult.

The original Wolf hall series is.

Is books one and two, and book one, she does a lot of Cromwell comma, he says.

And I think people said that is actually, it's quite mannered and it's more difficult bring up the bodies is much easier to understand.

But I did have to have a list of Norfolk equals whatever Norfolk's name is, you know, and the.

You know, who Anne Boleyn's related to and who Jane Seymour's related.

You kind of have to have that.

I mean, it's in the front of the book, but you have to kind of have that in mind.

But yeah, it's much more accessible the second one.

Okay, so if I said you could only read one of those books again.

Oh, I forgot that.

That's okay.

So of the five, which one would you pick?

If you could only read one of.

Those again, I think it would be the Austen.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Which is.

Which is not very suspenseful, is it?

It's comfort.

Right.

Like, it's a nice one.

That's familiar.

And I just think her.

Her lightness of touch.

But also she's saying a lot about society and family, isn't she?

She's saying a lot about sisters and I just think she just.

Yeah, she may.

I think.

I think if I only had one book, I'd be feeling a bit bleak.

I'd need something that made me smile, I think.

Yeah.

I would never do that to you, Sarah.

It'd be really me.

Oh, Sarah, it's been so much fun.

I've absolutely loved chatting to you.

Thank you so much.

Thanks for having me.

It's been lovely.

I really enjoyed that conversation with Sarah and I hope that you did too.

Based on a true story Sarah's latest novel is out now in Hard Work Back.

It is a great read and one that I would highly recommend.

As always, all of the books that we've talked about today are listed in the show notes with links to buy, so they're super easy for you to find.

I'll be back next Thursday chatting to another author and I really hope that you'll join me for that episode too.

Thanks for listening and see you next week.